Keith Allred

Keith Allred is the Executive Director of the National Institute for Civil Discourse (NICD). His work to bridge the partisan divide has been featured in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, The Hill, and Congressional Quarterly.

Keith was recruited to lead NICD because he had recently launched CommonSense American. Its over 75,000 members are three-for-three in championing in Congress solutions that attract bipartisan grassroots support. They played a meaningful role in passing legislation to end surprise medical billing in 2020, invest in America’s physical infrastructure in 2021, and update the Electoral Count Act in 2022.

Keith piloted CommonSense American at the state level in Idaho from 2005 – 2009. Its major legislative achievements led the Idaho Democratic Party to make the unusual move of asking him, as an independent, to be their nominee for Governor in 2010. 

Prior to returning home to pilot the citizens’ group, Keith was the first professor of negotiation and conflict resolution at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He started his academic career as a professor at Columbia. 

Keith earned a PhD in Organizational Behavior from UCLA and BA in American History from Stanford. 

A fifth-generation Idahoan who grew up working summers on the family cattle ranch, Keith finished eighth in the world standings of the National Cutting Horse Association in 2017.