Soren Dayton has been in Washington, DC since 2003, except for a year and a half sabbatical in India. He is a strategic communications, public affairs, and digital professional with experience across a range of industries.

Soren is the director of communications and policy at Protect Democracy, where he is building a team to advocate for protecting American democratic institutions. We are living in a time of specific domestic and international challenges to our institutions while a global wave of populist and anti-democratic sentiment is impacting much of the developed world.

Recently, Soren was Senior Vice President, Digital Advocacy in Hill+Knowlton Strategies’Washington, DC office. His background is in strategic, litigation, and crisis communications, public affairs, and digital, focused on industries such as energy and telecommunications. He has also worked on policy issues in human trafficking, human rights, immigration, trade, and labor.Soren and his wife took a 16 month sabbatical in India working with International Justice Mission, a leading global human rights organization. We were working to fight bonded labor, the most prevalent form of human trafficking for labor in the world and in India.

Previously -- and while in India -- Soren worked at Prism Public Affairs, which subsequently merged with Rasky Baerlein. Prior to that, he was at New Media Strategies and John McCain's campaign for President, among others. Before moving to Washington, DC, Soren helped found a small Chicago-based software company. He grew up in Chicago and will never get away from the interests that led him to study anthropology -- but also math -- at The University of Chicago and consider an academic career in it.

The picture was taken during a Ramzan (Ramadan in India) food walk in Bangalore in 2014.