[3] He graduated from Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia,[4] and magna cum laude from Princeton University, where he edited the Progressive Review.

from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was a Clerk at the Legal Aid Justice Center and Research Assistant to Professors A.E.

[7] The book is a first-person account of events before, during, and after the deadly "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017, as a microcosm of the challenges facing American democracy today.

[10] The book is about leadership and statesmanship that is also an intellectual and psychological biography of young James Madison and his rivalry with his nemesis Patrick Henry in the ratification of the U.S.

[26][27] In 2006, he wrote an article advocating for a doctrine of "exemplarism" as a version of progressive American exceptionalism, titled "City on a Hill" in the inaugural issue of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas.

[32] A voting rights attorney, he was statewide director for the 2004 election protection program directed by the Democratic National Committee.

[35] Signer has served as chair of the Emergency Food Network, president of the Fifeville Neighborhood Association, and a member of the steering committee of the West Main Street Redevelopment Project in Charlottesville.

Signer was senior policy advisor at the Center for American Progress, and later that year worked with John Podesta on President-Elect Barack Obama's State Department Transition Team.

He led the city to rehabilitate the historic African-American Daughters of Zion cemetery with a special allocation of $80,000 from Council's Strategic Fund.

[41] He worked with the city council to create a Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials, and Public Spaces to address controversies over Confederate statues in Charlottesville.

[48] [49] During Signer's tenure, the city council also created an Open Data policy,[50] and required agencies to register voters to vote online.

[51] In the wake of the violent "Unite the Right" event of August 2017, the city, under Signer's tenure, collaborated with Georgetown University's Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection to successfully sue over a dozen paramilitary groups under a provision of the Virginia Constitution to prevent them from entering the city again.