Matt Leighninger is the executive director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, an umbrella group that includes the major organizations in the field of deliberation and citizen involvement. Over the last twelve years, Matt has worked with citizen involvement efforts in over 100 communities, in 40 states and two Canadian provinces; roughly 25,000 people have taken part in those projects. Most of this work was supported by Everyday Democracy, of which he is a senior associate. Leighninger has also been a consultant to the National League of Cities, Centers for Disease Control, and the League of Women Voters. His first book, The Next Form of Democracy: How Expert Rule is Giving Way to Shared Governance – and Why Politics Will Never Be the Same, was released in 2006 by Vanderbilt University Press.