Helping the largest and most impactful organizations in the politics and advocacy space win more fights.

Teaching grad level courses in persuasive communication & audience analysis.

I help campaigns and organizations tell compelling stories and craft persuasive messages.Clients include:- A Congressional candidate in Colorado: I helped the candidate launch her campaign, craft her message, perfect her fundraising pitch (leading to exponential growth fundraising results), and hire fundraising and communications staff.- A Congressional candidate in California: I am helping the candidate identify potential donors, as well as prefect his stump speech and fundraising pitch.- The Dangerous Speech Project, a DC-based academic institute that studies speech that inspires violence between groups of people and finds ways to mitigate such speech while protecting freedom of expression. I help the DSP translate dense, often hard to understand academic research into understandable reports for a variety of audiences and stakeholders.- A US Senate candidate in Wyoming: I helped the candidate and their staff be more persuasive by turning their anecdotes into stories and their stories into good public narratives that forcefully argued for their ideas. After the campaign, I directed the team that wrote 2022 messaging guidelines for the WY Democratic Party.- The Brigham & Women's Hospital's "Behind The Mask" story project: I coach healthcare workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 response on how to craft engaging stories with a compelling arc and a hopeful message.- The senior correspondent of a nationally syndicated radio show and podcast. I helped her publish a bombshell piece about student debt in the New York Times.- The Dutch Labor Party. I am translating their 30-page party platform into persuasive campaign messages.

Turned a scientist into a nationally recognized candidate and a 3 person campaign into a 20 person powerhouse, resulting in: - a 70-fold fundraising increase - a 40-fold volunteer capacity increase - a 100-fold social media following increase - a campaign video Bill McKibben called “one of the best campaign video of this or any cycle” - a landslide primary win - a 31% increase in Democratic general election turnout - 75k votes in a state with only 45k Democrats - endorsements from high profile Senators and organizations - positive press placements in local and national outletsI also managed relationships with the Wyoming Democratic Party, the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and other stakeholders.

Trained organizers and volunteer leaders in 11 post-Super Tuesday states in person and by webinar on crafting narratives, organizing communities, and the latest movement technology.- Trained 900+ staff and volunteers on subjects like Crafting Your Narrative and Making Hard Asks in person and online- Managed relationships with volunteer leaders in three states, who recruited hundreds of volunteers to in-person trainings- Created training materials from simple slide decks to innovative and accessible videos to reach the widest audience- Recruited and onboarded new trainers (train-the-trainer) to drastically increase our training volume in a short timespan

Catalist is the Mothership of progressive data, providing campaigns with the data and tools they need to reach the right people with the right message. - Managed relationships with partners, clients and other stakeholders, translated and advocated for their needs internally- Led a cross-departmental team in expanding the Atlas Toolkit, Catalist’s data exploration tool for political operatives- Led deployment and client onboarding for The Toolkit- Developed trainings from the ground up; trained partners and clients to use our tools for data-driven message targeting

Earth Day is EDN's flagship campaign and is the world's largest civic observance, celebrated by more than 1 Billion people worldwide. As Earth Day campaign director, I built, trained and managed a team of organizers who cultivated strategic partnerships with governments, businesses, NGOs and academia to organize thousands of events with millions of participants, outperforming Earth Day 2016 goals by 50 percent.I also headed a massive collaborative gamified online climate communication effort with our corporate partner Rovio, reaching 10 million Angry Birds players. For this collaboration, I was able to pull in climate communication experts from the White House, NOAA, Yale, and the University of Southern California, as well as A-list movie star endorsers (see campaign video: https://youtu.be/tJTAV9u3HXo)In addition:- Guided the Communications department; supervised the op-ed writing team and climate textbook writing team- Represented EDN at domestic and international conferences (including COP21 in Paris)- On the record: represented EDN in television and radio interviews

- Cultivated strategic partnerships, including with the White House, NASA, NOAA, Yale, USC, The Smithsonian, and others- Headed the partnership with Rovio Entertainment (creator of Angry Birds), leading to the creation of "Champions for Earth," a climate-themed Angry Birds game adding millions of players to the climate movement- Assembled a team of leading climate communication experts from academia, industry and advocacy to create climate action messaging

As research manager at ICF, I advised government agencies on research and policy issues: I created research studies for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), worked on the National Institute of Health (NIH) school health policy team, and helped the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) translate complex behavioral research into actionable policy.- Trained and managed a team of five field staff - Designed communication experiments and surveys for CDC’s concussion education program to assess the CDC’s concussion messaging on 30,000 football coaches - Improved FEMA’s emergency preparedness communication by translating complex statistical research into actionable policy for their Preparedness in America report.- Co-authored CDC’s training and manual on statistical procedures in AIDS research- Partnered with hundreds of school districts to conduct the largest youth health study in the US- Edited business proposals resulting in $1.5 million of new business - Helped twenty colleagues become better communicators by creating and teaching a weekly public speaking class

One of the things I enjoy most in the world is taking complicated material and making it easy to understand for any audience. At the University of Maryland, that audience happened to be college students:- Developed and taught the course "Critical Thinking and Speaking"- Taught the course "Oral Communication: Principles and Practices"- Received the Department of Communication Outstanding Teaching Award- Designed and conducted controlled experiments about persuasive messaging and campaign strategies- Presented and published said findings at conferences and in academic journals- Nominated for the Department of Communication Outstanding Research Reward

- Managed a team of volunteers and young community leaders- Coordinated a 6 month outreach campaign; quadrupled participation- Won several large grants

- Taught debate, argumentation, and interpersonal persuasion to NGO leaders, politicians and business executives- Developed argumentation and debate curriculum for local and national politicians- Organized and moderated debates of up to 500 participants- Co-authored two widely used high school debate textbooks (used by more than 400 schools)- Managed the Institute website’s overhaul and online presence