About Us (the people)

Lisa Graves spearheaded the Koch Docs project, and is its Director and a curator. She previously served as a senior advisor in all three branches of the federal government, as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice, Chief Counsel for Nominations for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, and the Deputy Chief of the Article III Judges Division of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

She first began writing about the Koch influence on public policy in 2009 as the Executive Director for the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), where she launched the award-winning ALECexposed investigation. Her work has documented how Koch Industries and special interests funded by Charles and David Koch have influenced federal and state laws, through legislators and through the judiciary. She co-founded Documented Investigations, is on the board of the CMD, and has served as an advisor to UnKoch My Campus.

Her research has been cited in Jane Mayer’s Dark Money, Dan Kaufman’s Fall of Wisconsin, and other books. She has appeared as an expert on MSNBC, NBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, CNBC, BBC, C-SPAN, Democracy Now!, and other news shows. More information about her bio is available here.

Connor Gibson is a research specialist and consultant. He is the founder of Grassrootbeer Investigations, a free platform featuring some of his most recent research. He is a Senior Contributor to Koch Docs and a curator of the site.

Previously Gibson spent ten years at Greenpeace USA, researching polluting industries, their front groups running anti-environmental campaigns, particularly Koch Industries and the Koch billionaires.

The overlap between the Koch network’s lobbying activities and Koch-funded university programs eventually led him to co-found UnKoch My Campus. His accountability research has appeared in a wide variety of local, national and international media outlets. More information about Connor’s background is available in his first post on Grassrootbeer Investigations, including how he met Lisa Graves.