Austin Boral

Austin Boral is a joint MPP candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, an MBA candidate at the Harvard Business School, and a co-founder of Civic Roundtable. Civic Roundtable is building community and capacity among the public servants that power public institutions through a peer-to-peer community platform–starting with election officials. Civic Roundtable partners with agencies, associations, and nonprofits to connect public servants to the people they trust most (their peers) and the resources and expertise they depend on to get the job done. As a Cheng Fellow, Austin is launching Civic Roundtable with U.S. election administrations, with the goal of mitigating the election industry’s “Great Resignation” while improving the capabilities of election authorities and restoring trust in elections at the state and local level.

Austin’s passion for serving public servants has led him to work with government agencies and entities at the local (New York City), state (Vermont, New Hampshire), and federal (U.S. Senate, White House Office for Public Engagement & Intergovernmental Affairs, Department of Homeland Security) levels. Austin also spent three years in the public and social sector practice at McKinsey & Company, where he served federal agencies in capability building and organizational transformation. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Geography and Public Policy from Dartmouth College and a Certificate of Completion from the National Parks Service Junior Ranger program. When he’s not working on Roundtable, you can find Austin sous-cheffing with his fiancé, playing board games with his friends, and calling his mother (not at the same time).