Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie today announced the appointment of Ekow N. Yankah to the Public Campaign Finance Board and issued the following statement:

Elections are a sacred part of our democracy. With the creation of the Public Campaign Finance Board, and as we change the way we fund elections and campaign financing in our state, it is critical that we have the best and the brightest minds heading up the task. We are pleased to appoint Ekow N. Yankah to serve on the Public Campaign Finance Board, and given his background and commitment to making New York and our country a better place, we know he will bring a high level of competence and thoughtfulness to this important task.

Yankah is a professor at Cardozo School of Law, and specializes in election law and voting rights, as well as criminal law, jurisprudence and torts. His commitment to equality and justice has led him to serve on the board of the Innocence Project, which helps exonerate those wrongly convicted of crimes, and was awarded as an Advocate of Justice by the organization in 2017 for his work. He also serves as co-chair of the New York Democratic Lawyers Council. He earned a B.A. from the University of Michigan, graduated from Columbia Law School and received a Bachelor of Civil Law from Oxford University. We believe that his experience and accomplishments will make him an asset to the Public Campaign Finance Board.