Lea Endres
Co-Founder and CEO
Lea Endres is an entrepreneur, educator and human rights advocate. A renowned facilitator, she has spent most of her life working to make the tools of leadership available to everyone.
Lea’s commitment to leadership began as a fifteen-year-old working with the Oakland-based California Association of Student Councils. Hooked on the idea that a well organized community could accomplish anything, she spent the next few decades training people all over the world – from mayors in Japan to teachers in Los Angeles. She ran education programs at WorldLink Foundation and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights before helping to found Green for All, an organization dedicated to building an inclusive green economy.
Inspired by the internet’s revolutionary potential to make leadership and community building easier and more accessible, Lea ultimately joined Jim Gilliam and Jesse Haff in creating NationBuilder. She served as the company's Chief of Staff and then President, before becoming CEO in 2017.
Lea currently serves on the board of the Center for Humane Technology and is the Broad Family Fellow at the USC Center for the Political Future. She was a founding board member of the Dream Corps, and served in that capacity for nearly a decade. She is an accomplished screenwriter and the co-author of Jim Gilliam’s memoir, The Internet is My Religion.