Adrian Reyna
Howdy folks!
My name is Adrian. I am the data and technology manager at the United We Dream Network and I live in Washington, D.C. I am undocumented and unafraid, queer and unashamed! I was born in Mexico, grew up in Humble, Texas, and attended the University of Texas at Austin. I love traveling around the country, I love hiking and cooking, and I'm always down to party.
Erik Wallenius
Born in sunny California, living in snowy Chicago, and suitably grumpy about that situation, Erik manages field and data efforts for ACA enrollment in Illinois. After a "stint" in Pennsylvania (college, Army, 2008 Obama campaign), Erik headed back to his ancestral homeland in the Windy City. Once there, he worked on a variety of campaigns, got a dog*, wedded a lawyer**, and quintupled his board game collection***. Erik is suitably stoked about being at NOI training.
* he's a Shiba Inu, and his name is Loki Tyrion Lebowski
** her name is Maura, and she specializes in labor and employment law
*** yes please feel free to ask about this
Allison Dale-Riddle
After working on campaigns for several years, Allison went back to school to pursue a PhD in political science to learn more about statistics and experimental research methods. During her time in graduate school she conducted the first ever study on the effectiveness of text messaging as a voter mobilization tool, and co-authored a book on the impact of racial attitudes on Barack Obama's vote totals in the 2008 election. Now she is eager to bring her methodological toolkit back to the world of politics to help progressive candidates run smart and efficient campaigns.
Tony Smolenski
7 months of the year I work in Sound Design for musicals as a proud member of IATSE (Local USA829.) I've opened 29 shows on Broadway, and many more across the country and internationally.
5 months of the year I am a volunteer for progressive candidates in the NYC area, focusing on data. I've been volunteering on campaigns since I could walk (thanks Dad), stepping up my commitment level since '08. I was an NTL, and a DNC delegate, for Obama in Queens in '12. In '13 I was a founding member of Queens County for de Blasio, and was that campaign's PDI/VAN administrator.
I'm third generation Union and I fear what the current assault on Collective Bargaining could mean for my family. I can't spend like a Koch brother, all I have to donate is my time. I hope to maximize the impact of that time by developing my data skills.
Celia McTigue
Kylee was born and raised in a small agricultural community of California near the Mexico border. She has always felt a strong connection to the outdoors whether it was with her dad checking lettuce fields, surfing in Baja, snowboarding in New Zealand, or hiking through the Sierras. Last year she moved to Anchorage to become the Statewide Organizer for Alaska Center for the Environment. Prior to Alaska she worked as the Program Coordinator for the Environmental Center of San Luis Obispo (ECOSLO) and completed her Master’s in Public Policy at Cal Poly. While completing her B.S. in Environmental Science from Humboldt State University, she officially began her organizing career through the Food and Water Watch organization, “Take Back the Tap” campaign. She was part of the student organizing team that helped make Humboldt the first public university in the nation to ban bottled water sales on campus. The ban, along with other activist victories, have inspired her to continue environmental organizing as a profession and she looks forward to working on big statewide issues in Alaska!
Tasia Smith
Tasia is a born and raised Los Angeles Valley girl who got her first taste of organizing in 2012 on the President's reelection campaign in Philadelphia. Since then, she has enjoyed traveling to work field on 3 other candidate and advocacy campaigns - two of which were in the Deep South and gave this mixed-race, queer woman a lot of things to think about. She is fascinated and frustrated by the intersection of media, identity, and politics in the U.S., and is eager to gain the skills at Data BootCamp to become a more effective advocate in fighting to change the conversations we have about historically oppressed groups. She holds a degree in Ethnicity, Race & Migration and East Asian Studies from Yale University. An abundantly free spirit, she is attempting to do that whole putting-down-roots thing by moving to DC this May.
Andrew Greenberg
Andrew started his organizing career as a field organizer for OFA in Florida in 2012. It was there that his RFD showed him some of what was possible with data.
Andrew then worked as the volunteer coordinator for his local party. Last summer he started working with Enroll America to make sure people in North Texas had access to affordable health insurance through HealthCare.gov.
Outside of organizing, Andrew enjoys finding new ways to enjoy coffee and tea (ex. Turkish coffee and lapsang souchong), reading Southern Gothic novels, and being involved in his faith communities.
Andie Whitaker
Andie is a 23 year old recent graduate from the University of Minnesota and a single mother to her beautiful 4 year old daughter, Kendra. She is currently the President of the Minnesota Young DFL, and has held that position since the summer of 2013. She has been involved in politics most of her life, volunteering for her first campaign when she was only 6 years old. Andie's drive to be involved in politics is strongly rooted in her desire to make the world a better place for her daughter. She is committed to engaging young people and other under-represented individuals in the political process in order to create a more diverse and active electorate. Andie has a wide variety of political experience, having worked on over a dozen municipal, statewide, and national campaigns in the past 5 years.
Susy Bates
Susy Bates has nearly a decade of experience in the political campaign and non profit industry. Bates joined womenwinning in February 2011 where she launched the Political Recruitment and Training program for the organization. Since the inception of the program, womenwinning has seen an increase in women running and winning at all levels of office in the state of Minnesota. In 2011 alone, womenwinning was undefeated in Special Elections for open seats to the Minnesota Legislature. Prior to her work at womenwinning, Bates was a Regional Field and Political Director for the Margaret Anderson Kelliher for Governor Campaign where she helped secure a major party endorsement for the first time for any woman running for Governor in Minnesota. She then transitioned as the CD 5 Regional Field Director to the DFL Coordinated Campaign following the endorsement and managed operations for Mark Dayton during the recount in Hennepin County. Prior to her work in Minnesota, she served as a Regional Organizer for Planned Parenthood in Iowa and as a Field Organizer for the Iowans for Hillary Campaign.
Daniel Garcia
I started to get involved with organizing during my Junior year of college back in April 2010. Since then I have been a founder, co-founder, and executive board member to more than a dozen university organizations, joined leadership positions in the Immigrant Youth Justice League, and I currently serve as a community organizer with the DREAM Act Portal -- one of the largest forums catering to undocumented youth nationwide with over 70,000 registered members.
Samir Paul
Samir Paul is a consultant in IBM's public-sector Advanced Analytics and Optimization practice, where he has served the U.S. Postal Service's international network operations group. In the past, he has worked as a field organizer for OFA-Wisconsin in 2012 and as a public school teacher in Washington, DC, where he taught the only AP Computer Science class in the city. Samir studied computer science at Harvard University and later earned a master's degree in teaching from American University.
Hanna Thomas
Hanna is a Senior Campaigner at SumOfUs.org, working to hold corporations accountable. A Brit currently based in London and Tel Aviv, she has chased UN conferences around the world as part of the youth climate movement, founded the East London Green Jobs Alliance, was Co-Director at The Otesha Project UK, got an MSc in Climate Change & Policy, and worked on crowdfunded solar energy campaigns for 10:10. She is also an experienced trainer in anti-oppression and environmental justice. When she’s not at her laptop, Hanna likes biking, baking, and taking photos. She’s also learning the ukulele but it’s not going that well.
Hillary Anderson
Hillary is the current data and training manager for the Indiana Democratic Party. Prior to this role, she served as the president of the College Democrats of Indiana and interned at the Center for American Progress. Outside of politics, she enjoys cooking and traveling. Hillary is a graduate of Indiana University with a degree in economics.
Emily Callen
Emily Callen is the Wake County Field Director for Planned Parenthood Health Systems Action Fund. She got involved with PP after the Komen defunding incident in 2012, when she was stunned by how political women’s health care had become. Emily grew up in upstate New York, but has lived in North Carolina since 2012 and will happily share why her new home is the best place ever. She’s proud to be part of the Moral Monday/Forward Together movement that is spreading across the South and talks about the ACA and Medicaid expansion in her sleep (seriously). When she isn’t at work or at the legislature, Emily can be found on her bike, on a run, or cooking her way through Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking.
Danny Corum
Danny Corum is a gentleman from California, native to the forested northern region. Born into a union family, Danny knew from an early age the way of life secured to his family by way of his father's and brother's unionization. While his formal training is in English and American literature, he is a dilettante of many things including the art of fermentation. A transplant in New York for just over two years, he has managed in short time to complete a master of arts degree in labor studies, complete an internship with the UFT (where he officially cut his teeth in the labor movement working on political campaigns), and subsequently translate the internship into a full-time arrangement which positions him to direct a segment of the union's campaign field operations, among other regular responsibilities.
Enoch LaVelle
- Born in Northern California, raised in Minnesota
- Husband and father
- Avid baseball fan and enthusiast
- Data Manager at TakeAction Minnesota
- Part of "the movement" since July 2005
John Tyler
John is a 2011 Ohio University graduate who has spent a little more than two years working in the Ohio General Assembly for the current Assistant Minority Whip, Dan Ramos. Hoping to transition to a career in data analytics, his first interest in data was to increase his competitiveness in a fantasy baseball league he has been a part of since 2004. Today, he hopes to actually learn what he has been pretending to do all these years and use these skills for a greater good.
Molly Maloney
Molly Maloney is a Political Action Representative working with AFSCME Council 93 covering MA, NH, VT and ME. She first got her taste for politics as a field organizer in Reno, Nevada for Harry Reid's 2010 Senate bid. From there, she moved to Florida with AFSCME as a Political and Legislative Advocacy Coordinator. During this time, Scott Walker began his attack on public employees and almost all AFSCME staff were deployed to Wisconsin. Molly spent 4 months there as part of the successful campaign to Recall Randy Hopper in SD-18. From there, it was off to Ohio to fight back against SB 5 which attempted to strip collective bargaining rights for public employees. During 2012 and the beginning of 2013, Molly spent much of her time raising PAC money for AFSCME on the west coast. In September of 2013, she moved to Boston and helped elect Marty Walsh as the new mayor of Boston. Molly lives in Boston and enjoys cheering at the top of her lungs for all Boston sports teams.
RJ Kosineski
RJ's first experience organizing came from Organizing for America in 2012 for which he was a Field Organizer in Northern Virginia. Like so many others he threw his heart and soul into that campaign and came out of it with a greater appreciation for grassroots movements and people-powered campaigns. Since then he has been working at 270 Strategies in Washington, DC, a consulting firm with the mission to take the lessons learned from the 2008 and 2012 campaigns and use them to help its clients change the world.
Carolyn Mehta
Carolyn has served as a Case Manager with the Center for Conflict Resolution, a Field Organizer with Organizing for America, an AmeriCorps volunteer with Public Allies Chicago, and a Research Assistant with the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy. She grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana and completed her undergraduate and masters in public policy at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. She is passionate about civic engagement and works to get more young Chicagoans involved in the political process in her role as Director of Organizing with Chicago Votes.
Tara Brosnan
Tara Brosnan, born and raised in Boston, MA, moved to Las Vegas in 2010 to work in a cancer research laboratory. Tara was sucked into politics after being offered a field organizer position at Planned Parenthood of Southern Nevada, where she was previously a dedicated volunteer. After two years of organizing, lobbying, sex ed policy research, and learning about Nevada politics, Tara began working for State Voices and America Votes in Nevada as their data and targeting manager where she is able to combine two of her loves: numbers and smashing the patriarchy. Her other loves include bourbon, cats, and the Red Sox.
Tobias Micell-Gwiazdowski
A native Cheesehead, Tobias has lived and organized in Wisconsin almost all of his life. When he isn't out doing his part to save the world for democracy, he spends time with his awesome wife Angela, genius baby daughter Sofia, and Shiba Inus named Tiger Lily and Aristotle. He's a beer snob, a book nerd, an aficionado of classic hip hop, and has never eaten a Pop Tart or a Cheeto.
George Hayward
George J.J. Hayward served as a Fellow on the 2013 Cory Booker for U.S. Senate campaign and as a GOTV Organizer on the 2013 Bill de Blasio for Mayor campaign. Prior to joining the Booker campaign, George worked for two years as an Analyst at Morgan Stanley in the firm’s Public Finance Group. Joining the Firm in June 2011, he provided analytical and execution support in over $3.7 billion of city and state government, as well as corporate-backed tax-exempt financings. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, George worked in Deutsche Bank’s Media and Telecom investment banking coverage group and in the United States Senate as a Legislative Intern to Senator Barack Obama. He is a member of the A Better Chance program and is a mentor to its current students. George served in Orlando, Florida both as an election poll legal observer in OFA’s Legal Protection team, and as a field volunteer in the Obama Vote Corps during the 2012 presidential election. In 2013, he also helped contact voters for two successful New York City Council races. George graduated from Harvard University in 2011 with a B.A. in Government and from Phillips Exeter Academy in 2007 with high honors. He completed Foreign Policy coursework at the University of Cambridge through a Rockefeller Grant. George serves as a member of the A Better Chance Host Committee, as well as Teach For America’s Young Professionals Committee.
Steven Walters
Hi! I know my name listed is Steven, but I typically go by Craig. Nonetheless I will respond to either. I have lived most of my life around Atlanta, Georgia, but I was born in New Hampshire. I graduated from Berry College in Rome, Georgia with a B.A. in History. It is a small liberal arts school located towards the base of the Appalachian Mountains. Despite having only some two thousand students, it is actually the largest campus in the U.S. with approximately 28,000 acres. Needless to say, I had to enjoy the outdoors (it kind of happens with so much land at your disposal). Currently, I work with the Georgia House Democratic Caucus and will be overseeing their data and field operations for this upcoming election cycle. I tend to enjoy typical things like sports and music, eh, and, in case it needed to be said, politics.
Katie Miller
Currently, I'm living in D.C. and working as the Education Associate at NETWORK, the National Catholic Social Justice Lobby behind "Nuns on the Bus." I produce materials and facilitate workshops to educate people on issues of economic justice, access to quality healthcare, and the need for comprehensive immigration reform.
I recently graduated from Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI, where I studied political science, biology, and public health. From the first time I walked into an Obama office in the summer of 2008, I was hooked. I've spent time working in federal and local offices and on multiple candidate campaigns. In 2012, I did compliance for Tammy Baldwin's Senate campaign and discovered my love for all-things-data.
A true Wisconsinite, I always have a block of cheese and a gallon of milk in my fridge.
Rosa Mendoza
My name is Rosa Mendoza, I am originally from Valencia, Venezuela. I have worked previously on the Obama campaign, Alex Sink for Congress, and currently on the Barbara Sharief Re-Election campaign in Broward County, Florida. I am very passionate about social issues, and hope to apply my data knowledge in the future towards social change.
Jennifer Whitney
Jennifer Whitney is from the sparsely populated, but beautiful state of Idaho, where she worked 4 years as a field organizer for Planned Parenthood. After having her fill of outreach, she took her health care industry experience and used it to provide data management for a paid canvass helping reduce racial disparity in access to health care in Texas. Jennifer is a huge fan of progressive causes, but reproductive rights has a place in her heart, as does a Nigerian Dwarf goat named Albert, who loves to hike.
Blanca Espinoza
I grew in south Texas, more specifically the Rio Grande Valley, went to college and landed by chance a part-time job doing data entry for Texas Organizing Project in April 2013. I guess I was not as bad as I thought since I was promoted to Data Manager of the San Antonio office in March this year. Still very new at this but hoping to learn lot more.
Gabriel Johnson
Gabriel is a progressive organizer and activist from New York City. He has worked for several campaigns, including Claire McCaskill 2012 and Rush Holt for Senate. When not empowering communities, he enjoys quiz bowl and playing Ultimate.
Dyana Limon-Mercado
I have worked for Planned Parenthood in Texas for over three years. In my role I coordinate and support the four Texas affiliates in executing statewide public affairs work in the areas of organizing, communications, and public policy. My prior experience includes disability and health care advocacy, organizing for state House races, and working in the Texas House. I am a graduate of Texas State University and received my MBA from the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Jon Yee
I have been bouncing around doing various jobs for awhile. I have worked at a Housing Authority, tech start ups, and community organizations. I found my passion working at worker centers advocating and empowering low wage working class folks in California. I love to consume pop culture: books, comics, TV, movies basically anything that looks to raise the voices of the marginalized.
Noah Dion
Noah Dion is currently the Political Organizer for Ohio with the American Federation of Teachers. Noah was born and raised just outside Cleveland, and caught the political bug in high school when he got an internship with his local Congresswoman. After studying Politics and History in college, Noah joined the Ohio Democratic Party’s effort to re-elect Governor Ted Strickland in 2010 as a field organizer. Despite a very tough election night, has been hooked on organizing ever since. Noah has held political and field roles on campaigns with Labor, the Democratic Party, various candidates, and local issues. He now lives back in his hometown where he is excited to continue his efforts on behalf of AFT and other progressive causes!
Tim Lumpkins
Lindsay Maas
Lindsay is a Regional Field Manager for Planned Parenthood Affiliates of Michigan based in Detroit, Michigan. She received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan in Political Science and Women’s Studies. After graduation, she spent time in China directing an English school and returned home to continue to follow her passion for community development and social justice. She earned a Juris Doctor Degree from Wayne State University Law School and has since called Detroit home where she is raising her two young daughters. Lindsay carries her belief that access to quality health care is a human right into her work at Planned Parenthood advocating for progressive reproductive health policy.
She devotes her work to community based movement building and partners with community leaders, unions and workers, progressive organizations, faith based communities, and service providers to advocate on behalf of underrepresented groups. Lindsay has organized such programs as a statewide campus tour raising awareness about health disparities experienced by women of color and led a door to door canvass in the Spring of 2013 reaching 80,000 people in the City of Detroit with information about Obamacare and Medicaid programs. She lives for elections and holding our leaders accountable through voter engagement and education and is looking forward to November!
Dawn Cohea
My hometown is Port Arthur, TX, but I currently reside in Houston, TX. I currently have one dog which I think of as a human, and his name is Charley. I graduated from Sam Houston State University with a degree in History and Political Science, and I am currently working on my Masters in Education from the same institution. My love for politics and research came at an early age from my family. They were constantly talking, debating, and researching news and information, so naturally I would start to join in with them as well.
With data, I hope to give a clearer understanding of information to whichever organization that I am working for as well as guiding them with that information to make the best decisions that they can make.
Ryan Rolfs
I have been involved in campaigns for Democratic candidates and progressive causes in South Dakota since 2008. I am attending Data BootCamp as a member of Raise South Dakota -- the ballot question committee to raise the minimum wage in South Dakota.
John Yaggi
From Toledo, OH and a 2006 graduate of Indiana University. Worked in political organizing for 6 years before joining AFT in 2012. Have been working for AFT in Wisconsin the past two years reorganizing local unions as their contracts expired after Act 10.
Mallory Long
Mallory is the deputy field director of the Southern Access Project in New Orleans, Louisiana with the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. A native Ohioan, Mallory worked with PPFA and Get Covered America as an organizer on the Affordable Care Act rollout in Cleveland, Ohio. Her first organizing job was as a field organizer in the outer Cleveland suburbs with Organizing for America in 2012. Mallory holds bachelors degrees in journalism and women's studies from Ohio University, where she had her first experiences organizing around women's issues. When she isn't working, Mallory enjoys cartoons and hanging out with her cat, Eddie.
Ben Hodapp
Originally from Iowa. Currently work at the League of Conservation Voters after spending 7 years on the campaign trail.
Anna Korman
Anna is fresh off of graduating from George Washington University with a degree in political science. In her spare time she enjoys trivia, reading about American presidents, talking about feminism, and working to get more women involved in all levels of politics.