State Directors

State Directors at Atheists for Liberty work to support the tens of millions of atheists who value individual rights and the separation of religion & government.

State Map

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California

Fred Schein

State Director
Fred Schein lives in Marin County, just north of San Francisco. He has been an active member of both his county and state Republican party for more than a decade including being county vice chairman and a sat party delegate. He has been a local and state leader of Log Cabin Republicans for 12 years and is the leadership Chair for Log Cabin Republicans of California. He has founded five of the organization’s eleven chapters. He is three-time president of the San Francisco chapter and two-time president of the Marin chapter. He was instrumental in having the California Republican Party include Log Cabin as an official part of the party, a national first and still only accomplishment. He was key in getting his Republican County central committee to support marriage equality. It remains the only Republican County committee in the country to have done so. He is a long-time speaker at California and Nevada College Republican and YAL campus chapters and has been a keynote speaker at their conventions. He maintains a large network of alumni.
Fred is a six-yar Naval officer veteran with service in Naval Intelligence and two years as executive officer of a river patrol base in Vietnam. He is an avid skier and past present of the Northern California Gay Ski Club. Additionally, he is past commissioner of the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Softball League. He is active in community service projects. He has become active in organizations focused on reducing hostile polarization in politics.
He is a graduate of Rutgers University and is widely traveled. He has visited every stat and lived in six of them. Raised as a nominal Roman Catholic, Fred became an unswerving atheist at age seven and is enthusiastic about civilly debating it. Fun fact. Fred has not missed an election since he became eligible and has voted by mail from Panama, Italy, Vietnam, the UK and twice from north of the Artic Circle.

Idaho

Kayla Saunders

State Director
Kayla Saunders has previously served as the Mississippi National Committeewoman for
the Young Republican National Federation. She considers herself a lifelong learner and
admirer of various atheists like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Christopher Hitchens, and Jerry Coyne.
Professionally, she works on various efforts that strive to improve the rights of crime
victims and their families.

Minnesota

Bruce Honnigford

State Director
Bruce Honningford began his lengthy involvement in the atheist movement as a
member of the Minnesota chapter of American Atheists and continued his activism as a
member of Minnesota Atheists. He was the director and host of the television and radio
show “Atheist Talk,” which discussed various areas of interest such as humanism and
secularism.

New Hampshire

Ryan Tuttle

State Director
Ryan Tuttle is a former Jehovah’s Witness and Ministerial Servant and Pioneer from a
Spanish language congregation. Ryan is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Behavioral Science and works as a graduate educator and researcher. As an atheist convert and freethinker, he strives to combat tribalism, the rejection of science, and intellectual or moral authoritarianism in the skeptic community.

New York

Dan Joseph

State Director
Dan Joseph is a staunch supporter of the United States Constitution and is committed
to preserving Enlightenment Values. He believes America is at a crucial turning point
where it has become absolutely necessary to uphold and promote the ideas and beliefs
brought forth by our Founding Fathers.

North Carolina

Christina Williams

State Director
Christina Williams is the former Executive Director of the North Carolina Federation of Young Republicans and has participated in a variety of political organizations and speaker series. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Meredith College in Political Science with a minor in Women’s Studies. She is a strong advocate for secular reform in conservative political channels and considers herself an Agnostic, a fiscal conservative, and a social libertarian.

Oregon

Sylvia Benner

State Director
Sylvia Benner is a transplant from Germany to Oregon, where she co-founded Center for Inquiry Portland and co-led the group for over 9 years. A dyed-in-the-wool classical liberal, she has been in search of sanity and reason in what is left of the atheist movement. Coming up short, she has devoted her efforts to more profitable pursuits, such as family, business, riding her BMW F800 GS, and building an earthen oven for perfect sourdough bread. She hopes to increase the quantity of liberalism in atheism in her role as Oregon State Director of AFL. In her working life, she is an ATA-certified freelance technical translator and currently serves on the board of the Oregon Society of Translators and Interpreters.

Virginia

Jake Klein

State Director
Joseph (Jake) Klein is a writer and filmmaker. He is the co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of The Black Sheep. Prior to founding The Black Sheep, Jake was the Director of Media Production at the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR) and ran the Capital Research Center’s Dangerous Documentaries division, where he served as executive producer on the feature film No Safe Spaces and producer on the Politically Incorrect Guide animated series, amongst other projects. Jake’s writing has has appeared in Quillette, The Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, and he's the author of the upcoming book Redefining Racism: How Racism Became “Power + Prejudice”. Jake came to atheism out of Modern Orthodox Judaism, inspired by Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins. He is also a libertarian most influenced by Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, and Ron Paul.