Full Name
Mike Signer
Job Title
Fmr. Mayor of Charlottesville, VA (2016-18)
Company
Chair, Communities Overcoming Extremism
Speaker Bio
Mike Signer is the founder and chair of Communities Overcoming Extremism: the After Charlottesville Project. He is an award-winning former mayor, a corporate executive, and an author whose leadership in support of democratic values, and against extremism and intolerance, has been recognized around the nation. (He is appearing as a private citizen, not on behalf of the City or City Council of Charlottesville).

Mike served as Mayor of Charlottesville from 2016 to 2018, a AAA-bond-rated city of nearly 50,000 that is frequently ranked among America's best places to live and that has Virginia's lowest unemployment rate.

Mike is a lecturer at the University of Virginia and author of the forthcoming Cry Havoc: Charlottesville and American Democracy Under Siege (Public Affairs 2020). His books Demagogue: The Fight to Save Democracy from Its Worst Enemies (St. Martin's Press 2009) and Becoming Madison: The Extraordinary Origins of the Least Likely Founding Father (PublicAffairs 2015) have been assigned in classes at Rutgers University, the University of Virginia, James Madison University, and George Mason University. He has written opinion pieces and essays for The Atlantic,The Washington Post, Time, Vox, Democracy, and The New Republic, among others.

He is also Vice President and General Counsel of a leading Virginia technology company with over 400 employees, where he serves on the firm's executive team.

He is the recipient of the Anti-Defamation League's Levenson Family Defender of Democracy Award in 2017, the 2018 Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of California Alumni Club of Washington, D.C., and the 2019 Courage in Political Leadership Award from the American Society for Yad Vashem. He is a member of the 2018 class of Aspen Institute Rodel Fellows. He was recognized by Forward Magazine in its "Forward 50" 2017 list of the 50 most influential Jewish leaders in America. He was a 2009 candidate for lieutenant governor of Virginia and has received senior appointments from three Virginia governors.

He has been profiled by CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian and interviewed by Meet the Press, Face the Nation, the Rachel Maddow Show, and NPR's Morning Edition.

He holds a Ph.D. in political science from U.C., Berkeley, where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow; a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law; and a B.A. in politics, magna cum laude, from Princeton University, where he was a work-study student. Growing up, he attended majority-minority public schools in Arlington, Virginia.

He lives with his family in Charlottesville.