Ady Barkan is a lawyer and activist. He is known for confronting Jeff Flake on a plane in 2017, asking Flake to "be a hero" and vote no on a tax bill. Barkan was raised in Claremont, California and has been interested in activism since his teen years. He graduated from Columbia College in 2006 and earned his J.D. degree from Yale Law School in 2010. He now works for the Center for Popular Democracy, where he created the Fed Up campaign to advocate with the Federal Reserve for the impact of monetary policy on low-income people. Following his encounter with Jeff Flake, he developed the Be a Hero PAC to support progressive causes and candidates.Barkan was diagnosed with the terminal neurogenerative disease ALS in 2016. In 2019, his first book, "Eyes to the Wind: A Memoir of Love and Death, Hope and Resistance" was published.