My career has combined politics, service and entrepreneurship. I was elected at 22 to the Vermont House of Representatives and served for seven years focusing largely on progressive economic development efforts and youth empowerment. While in the House I pursued a career in marketing ending up Marketing Director of Logic Associates, a Vermont-based ERP company that served the commercial printing industry and grew to $18.5 million in sales. In 1999 I was asked to join the Clinton Administration to Direct the AmeriCorps*VISTA program overseeing 6000 full-time people in the fight against poverty. Returning to Vermont in 2002, I was elected to the State Senate and started working at Dartmouth College developing programs to support students hoping to pursue careers in the non-profit and public sectors. I have also served as a strategy consultant to nonprofit and for-profit companies.Having left the Senate in 2006, my goal is to work in a field that combines these passions and allows me to have an impact on the national stage. I found that and more at Google where I created the community affairs program for the company from scratch, starting with data center communities, US offices and eventually international data centers, special projects and Google Fiber. All the while, working out of the Google Vermont office that I opened in White River Junction, and continues today. After a brief foray back into politics, I turned my focus back to my passion of empowering rural communities first with an appointment at the MIT Media Lab and then founding the Center on Rural Innovation, an action tank dedicated to closing the opportunity gap in small town America. Specialties: Strategic planning, social entrepreneurship, marketing, branding and identity, government affairs, community economic development, leadership development, public speaking/communication, policy research, development.