Rhiana Gunn-Wright is the former Director of Climate Policy at the Roosevelt Institute and one of the architects of the Green New Deal. She has also worked as the Policy Analyst for the Detroit Health Department headed by Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Policy Director for El-Sayed’s 2018 Michigan gubernatorial campaign, and the Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellow at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. A 2013 Rhodes Scholar, she lives outside of Chicago and is writing her first book about how white supremacy undermines American climate policy. While at Mesa, she worked on a corresponding essay about how political polarization in the U.S. is, fundamentally, a fight over the future of white American identity.