Leigh M. Chapman is the Division Director for Pro-Democracy Alliance and Structural Reform at Open Society Foundations. Chapman leads Open Society’s work to strengthen U.S. democracy by shoring up and reforming democratic institutions, expanding and protecting voting rights, and building a multi-racial, pro-democracy majority.
Chapman is also the former Acting Secretary of State of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and served in that role from 2022-2023.
In 2022, Chapman managed an election process that saw record voter turnout. She worked across the Commonwealth with county and local officials to ensure voters were registered, that mail-in ballots were counted, and that voters were armed with facts about their rights to counter election disinformation.
Chapman has had a distinguished career as a civil rights attorney. She has served as the executive director of Deliver My Vote and as the senior director of the Voting Rights Program at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Earlier in her career, she was a senior policy advisor at Let America Vote and the director of policy for the Pennsylvania Department of State, where she managed the department’s policy and regulatory development process.
She began her career as a staff attorney in the Voter Protection Program at the Advancement Project.
She received a BA from the University of Virginia and a JD from Howard University School of Law.