About Us
Lynda Gardner is the president and managing shareholder of Gardner & Gardner which she co-founded in 1990 with her husband, former Oregon State Senator Jim Gardner. Prior to co-founding the firm, she practiced corporate and tax law at the law firms of Jones, Lang, Klein, Wolf & Smith and Lindsay, Hart, Neil & Weigler. For an eight-year period, Lynda served as Deputy City Attorney for the City of Portland, representing a number of city bureaus, including the Portland Department of Transportation, the Bureau of Street Lighting, the Bureau of Environmental Services, the Bureau of Cable Communications and Franchises, and the Water Bureau.
Public service to the community has been an important part of Lynda’s professional life. She has served as a Multnomah County Planning Commissioner, contributed service on Bar Committees and has served in the capacities of officer, director and legal counsel to many non-profit corporations and organizations, including Schools for the City, the Portland French American International School, the Oregon Health Forum, the Conference of World Regions, the Oregon Executive Development Institute Association and the Oregon Liability Reform Coalition. She has served on the Board of Trustees of the Oregon Zoo Foundation.
Lynda is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco (formerly U.C. Hastings College of Law). She was Articles Editor of the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly during law school. She has also served as Adjunct Professor of Law at Lewis and Clark Law School and as Chief of Staff to Senator Jim Gardner in the Oregon State Senate.
Joe Gardner has served as a lobbyist and policy analyst for Gardner & Gardner since 2019. Before joining the firm, he earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in International Relations, Comparative Politics, and Social Science Methodology. In his lobbying work, Joe leverages this policy expertise and his extensive teaching experience to unpack complex policy proposals and identify the most effective strategies for educating policymakers on key issues and priorities.
He is an expert in a wide range of quantitative and qualitative methods, including survey design and political polling, statistical & social network analysis, ethnographic analysis, and qualitative interviewing. Joe has taught college-level courses on a wide range of political and public policy subjects including parliamentary and electoral strategy, international security, and interpersonal conflict resolution & negotiation. Prior to receiving his master’s and Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley, Joe graduated with a bachelor’s with Honors from the University of Chicago.
In addition to his university and lobbying experience, Joe has participated in multiple congressional primary and general election campaigns, volunteering his services as a polling analyst and contributing to constituent outreach efforts. He has also worked as a grant coordinator and project manager organizing research fellowships and transnational academic conferences in Europe and the United States. Joe possesses a strong commitment to community service, exemplified in his years of experience helping to administer non-profit student cooperatives, humanitarian organizations, and animal welfare shelters.