John Bridgeland

John Bridgeland is Executive Chairman of the Office of American Possibilities, a civic moonshot factory that taps the entrepreneurial talent of Americans to solve public challenges together across divides. In that capacity, he is Founder & CEO of More Perfect, a bipartisan initiative to protect and renew American democracy by advancing 5 foundational Democracy Goals; Co-Founder and CEO of the COVID Collaborative; and Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of Welcome.US to engage Americans in supporting the resettlement of Afghan, Ukrainian and other refugees. Bridgeland is also Founding CEO and Vice Chairman of Malaria No More launched at the White House Summit on Malaria he co-led. Since 2001, more than 14 million lives have been saved from malaria.

He has led efforts on the high school dropout crisis for 20 years, with his report, The Silent Epidemic, sparking major media attention, a civic marshal plan, and co-leadership of the Grad Nation campaign. His work was featured on the August 2024 cover of the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Graduation rates rose from 71% in 2001 to 86.5% in 2020, resulting in over 5 million more graduates.

Bridgeland was appointed by President Obama to the White House Council for Community Solutions (2010) and by President George W. Bush as Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council and first Director of the Freedom Corps after 9/11, which expanded national service opportunities to the highest levels then and since. A Harvard honors graduate in government, he also studied in Europe as a Rotary International Fellow and earned a J.D. from the University of Virginia. He holds honorary degrees and has given commencement addresses at half a dozen colleges, including the College of William and Mary and Johns Hopkins University.  

He lives with his wife in McLean, Virginia, and has three children.