Speaker Bios

For information on each session: See session catalog

Steve Barber, of Barber & Gonzales Consulting, is a practitioner, consultant, trainer, facilitator, and author in organizational effectiveness and conflict management. His background in politics includes: successful campaign manager, legislative aide to two State Legislators, executive in two State agencies, and architect leading the introduction of a non-adversarial approach to labor-management and multi-party high stakes public sector negotiators.

Mara Baron is a Working America Data Administrator and former HRC team member.

Amy Bayersdorfer is the Strategic Director of Postcards to Voters. We provide addresses and talking points for GOTV postcards supporting progressive candidates. In the past year, our writers have sent over 1 million postcards supporting 60+ candidates in special elections nationwide. In her regular life, Amy helps technology startups work effectively.

Judith Bolker has an extensive background in canvassing in California, Nevada and Virginia during all phases of a campaign. She serves on the Steering Committee for Democracy Action, is a Co-Lead for Swing Left San Francisco, and is on the Agenda Committee and Steering Committee for Rock the Congress.

Gary Brown is the owner and President of Political Data Inc. (PDI) that develops and manages the MOE system exclusively for the California Democratic Party. (PDI is California’s largest provider of voter data and software to political campaigns and organizations.) Gary has almost 30 years of experience working with Democratic candidates and progressive organizations in California. Before working at PDI, Gary was a field organizer working on campaigns in Orange County. Before working as a field organizer, Gary was a drummer in a Reggae band.

Jay Carmona has been a campaigner and strategist since 2000. Jay has worked on dozens of campaigns in a career spanning multiple arenas of the American left, including helping to roll out the world’s first campaigns to divest public pension funds from fossil fuels at 350.org. Jay specializes in massive, volunteer-led, online and offline grassroots organizing campaigns, and works with networks and campaigns nationally and locally.

Brigitte Davila, J.D., is the President of the Board of Trustees, City College of San Francisco, and Lecturer in the Department of Latino/Latina Studies at SF State University.

Lariza Dugan-Cuadra is Executive Director of the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN) of Northern CA, where she is committed to building on CARECEN SF’s 30-plus years of history, responding to the needs of the Central American diaspora, recently arrived immigrants and greater Latino community in San Francisco and the Bay Area. She is a passionate, creative and effective community builder and immigrant rights advocate.

Drew Ellsworth is a lawyer and a District Captain in Sister District SF, working with Theresa Kolish to run the Voter un-Suppression Project.

Stephanie Engelsen is a District Captain with the Sister District Project of San Francisco and co-chair of the Fundraising Committee, which raised over $40,000 for two winning VA legislative candidates in 2017.

Elizabeth Erickson currently works as the Training Director for Organizing for Action. Obsessed with how people learn and grow, she seeks to create experiences for volunteers across the country to be engaged with our democracy. In her free time, she enjoys finding and making good ice cream and walking along Lake Michigan in Chicago.

Donnie Fowler, Co-founder of Democracy Labs and CEO of Tech4America, has spent three decades around Silicon Valley and national politics. He worked in Bill Clinton's White House and moved to California in 2001 to work at Silicon Valley's TechNet. He has worked on eight presidential campaigns, including National Field Director for Al Gore in 2000, and has a perfect 3-0 record leading presidential battleground states for Bill Clinton, John Kerry, and Barack Obama. In 2016, Donnie led the political operations on the floor of the Democratic National Convention, serving as the Party's "family counselor" as Hillary's and Bernie's delegates were packed into a basketball arena for four days.

Ellen Ginsberg is the local group lead for the San Francisco chapter of Moms Demand Action, a grassroots organization dedicated to commonsense gun reforms. Ellen draws on her experience in government and politics and as an attorney to advocate for laws and programs that will end the epidemic of senseless gun violence.

Emily Gittleman is the Digital Director at 50+1 Strategies, a top Bay Area political consulting firm. There, she leads on digital and social media advertising, email programs, and digital organizing. Emily got her her start in politics on Sen. Cory Booker’s special Senate election in 2013. She spent three years with Senator Booker as his Director of Operations and State Scheduler in his official office before relocating to San Francisco and joining the 50+1 team in 2016.

Jennifer Halsing works as a CFO for a telecommunications company. She is one of the founding members of Kitchen Table Resistance (KTR), a Swing Left group based in San Leandro. KTR organizes canvassing and voter registration events in CA-21 and is an active member of CA-21 Resistance, a coalition of activist groups committed to flipping CA-21 from red to blue in the 2018 midterm elections.

Adriel Hampton’s consultancy provides strategy, marketing, and branding for progressive political candidates, civic tech companies, and nonprofits. He currently advises state and federal candidate campaigns, including Gayle McLaughlin for California Lt. Governor. In 2009, he was the first person to use Twitter to launch a bid for U.S. House.

Shara Hardwick’s specialty is uncovering the psychological motivators behind purchase behavior and using those insights to improve digital marketing campaigns. She leads a team of academics, data scientists and creatives in pioneering real-time customer research and values profiling. Since founding Zenzi in 2002, where she is CEO, Sarah's high energy and trailblazing spirit have fueled the company's growth into an award-winning marketing firm with clients such as Nestle, Chiquita, Ghirardelli Chocolate, Crystal Geyser Water, and more. ( http://www.zenzi.com/ )

Linda Herman is a facilitator and project manager professionally and brings her leadership skills to the efforts to win elections. She began her activist career the night of Nov 9, 2016. She is the co-founder of Rock the Congress (with Pat Mundy), leads the formation of the RTC coalition and co-leads Swing Left Marin.

Stephanie Hibbert is a member of the steering committee of the SF Bay Area Chapter of Refuse Fascism (refusefascism.org).

Kook Huber has been a volunteer with OFA Contra Costa since 2013, serving as the lead activist for the Affordable Care Act and OFA Fellow Manager. Since January, she has been the lead organizer for the Bay Area CD21 Action Coalition, with the mission to recruit volunteers to support election activities in the district and to build a network of phone banks in the Bay Area.

Andrew Kim is the Field Director for Flip the 14. He has been a political entrepreneur, building winning campaign and business teams for over ten years. Andrew has recruited, trained, and deployed over 1,000 interns in congressional, gubernatorial and presidential campaigns. Currently, Andrew manages a full time call center operation. Andrew was the Campaign Manager for Congressman John Garamendi in 2014, building a field team that made over 1,000,000 contact attempts in that cycle.

Catherine Klein, Environmental Scientist, is an IndivisibleSF Group Leader, member of the IndivisibleSF Steering Committee, and facilitator for the Harris Group.

Theresa Kolish is a lawyer and a District Captain in Sister District SF, working with Drew Ellsworth to run the Voter un-Suppression Project.

Doug Linney is the owner of The Next Generation, a progressive campaign consulting firm that has run over 150 state and local campaigns. He was Political Director of the California League of Conservation Voters and is currently a Board member. Doug co-founded Flip the 14, a PAC dedicated to flipping the 14 CA GOP seats through supporting the Resistance with professional campaign assistance. He serves as an elected member of the East Bay Municipal Utility District.

Denise Lopez, Executive Director of the Democratic Party of Washoe County, has worked to promote meaningful civic engagement and political participation of diverse communities. She has extensive experience on national, state, and local electoral campaigns. She is a former candidate for Sparks City Council, Washoe County, Nevada. Denise started her work in politics as a Field Organizer for President Obama's 2012 re-election campaign in Florida, one of the most competitive battleground states.

Margaret McCarthy has managed volunteer communities at organizations including 826Valencia, Spark Program Bay Area, and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, where she recently served as Interim Executive Director.

Lorraine Meier joined Moms Demand Action shortly after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. In December 2016 she because the San Francisco Chapter data lead, and the next month she accepted the State Data Lead volunteer position.

Patrick Mundy began his activist career by marching against the first Iraq war, helped organize legal resistance to the dismantling of KPFA in 1999, and has done phone-banking and canvassing for any number of progressive campaigns. In the 2016 Democratic Primary, he led teams of canvassers in Iowa, Nevada and at home in California. He helped co-found Rock The Congress in the spring of 2017.

Lucia Nuñez (noon-yez) is the Organizing Director in California's Tenth Congressional District for the California Democratic Party. She works to fight against the Trump agenda and hold Republican Representative Jeff Denham accountable by supporting local grassroots efforts and building a coalition of progressive activists working to unseat Jeff Denham. Her professional background includes working with Ami Bera's Frontline Congressional campaign in Sacramento, and in DC at Democratic consulting firms New Partners and Brilliant Corners Research and Strategies.

Susan Pfeifer is active in Democracy Action, leading volunteers in phone banking and voter registration. She has served as an elected delegate from San Francisco's 19th CA Assembly District to the California Democratic Convention for the past ten years. As a volunteer leader in the 2016 Hillary Clinton Campaign, Susan helped recruit and train team leaders throughout Northern California, as well as running the Nevada Travel Desk at the SF-HQ. She has registered hundreds of voters, including at monthly New Citizens Swearing In Ceremonies.

Dan Pfeiffer ran the communications office for the Obama-Biden Transition team and was then appointed Deputy White House Communications Director after the inauguration of Barack Obama. Less than a year later, Pfeiffer was named White House Communications Director. He remained in the role for the entire first term of the Obama presidency, holding that position significantly longer than those in the current administration. At the start of President Obama's second term, Pfeiffer was promoted to Senior Advisor for Strategy and Communications. He left the White House on March 6th 2015. Dan is the current co-host of Pod Save America and the author of the forthcoming book, Yes We (Still) Can: Politics in the Age of Obama, Twitter and Trump.

Steve Pierson serves as the Swing Left Regional Organizing Coordinator for CA-25 and CA-39. He works to build coalitions of leaders to effectively utilize volunteers, and develop canvassing and volunteer export programs. Steve has also facilitating training workshops in the Southern California area and has produced a series of training videos on voter registration and canvassing.

Deepak Puri is an engineer and Silicon Valley veteran with over 15 years experience at Netscape, Oracle and VMware. He co-founded Democracy Labs, a non-profit group in Jan 2017 to apply existing tech and media solutions, and specialized volunteers to help progressive campaigns. DemLabs has worked with multiple campaigns across across the country to identify common needs and then identified affordable, commercial apps to meet them. DemLabs trains activists, candidates and advocacy campaigns on how to make the most of the latest digital apps and social media.

Sylvia Russell has been a political activist for the past 10 years. She is one of the Leaders and Lead Phone Bank Trainer for Democracy Action, Marin, and is a member of the Marin Leaders Network. Sylvia is also a member of the Central Committee and the San Francisco Steering Committee for Rock the Congress.

Jon Ryder is Executive Director of Run To Win Arizona, which has a mission to recruit, train, and support Democratic candidates. He was Executive Director of the Maricopa County Democratic Party (in the nation’s 4th largest county with over 4 million people) from 2013 to 2017. Jon received his B.A. in Political Science and American Studies from Boston University.

Fran Schreiberg is a volunteer with Working America in the Central Valley and is on the 501(c)(3) board – the Working America Education Fund.

Susan Shain is co-lead of Swing Left SF and a consultant specializing in leadership and organizational development. Before, she was the CEO of CORO Center for Civic Leadership, where she developed programs for future leaders from diverse constituencies. Prior to CORO, she was Director of Philanthropic Services at The San Francisco Foundation overseeing fundraising and donor services.

Jacinth Sohi is the COO at Rapid Resist, which uses peer-to-peer texting to put the resistance in office. Last year Rapid Resist was the largest peer texting operation in the U.S., edging out Planned Parenthood and MoveOn. Previously, Jacinth was at Uber and Google where she specialized in launching products and scaling operations.

Liliana Soroceanu, PhD, is an IndivisibleSF Group Leader and co-facilitator for the Feinstein Group.

Congressman Eric Swalwell, 37, represents California’s 15th Congressional District, in the East Bay. As co-chairman of the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, he helps set the caucus’ policy agenda and oversees committee assignments. As founder and chairman of Future Forum, he is House Democrats’ point man on outreach to millennials – the nation’s biggest, most diverse and best-educated generation. And as Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee’s CIA Subcommittee and a member of the Judiciary Committee, he is playing a key role in keeping our nation safe. Raised in Dublin, Calif., he’s the son of a retired police officer and a still-working mother; the oldest of four siblings; and was the first in his family to attend college. After earning a law degree, working as a county prosecutor and serving on the Dublin City Council, he won his first House term in 2012.

Barry Thornton is a member of steering committee of the SF Bay Area Chapter of Refuse Fascism, and is also a staff member of Revolution Books, Berkeley.

Mary Trounstine has been an activist for 50 years. She is currently active in Swing Left San Leandro and Sister District CA-13. Mary canvassed in Virginia for Kathy Tran and is currently registering community college students in CA-04 and CA-21.

Juli Uota has organized phone banks for Democracy Action, oversaw all phone banks at the Hillary for America SF headquarters, the Obama 2012 phone bank on Fillmore, and the Obama 2008 GOTV phone bank on Market Street. Since 2009, Juli has been the Phone Bank Coordinator for the SF Bike Coalition’s twice-monthly fundraising phone banks.

Christine Wei is a former journalist with 10 years of experience in print and digital. She co-founded the media team at Indivisible SF in early 2017 and advises grassroots organizers throughout the Bay Area on their communication strategies. She serves as a communications lead for Rock the Congress, and her 2018 goal is to help progressive groups generate content and coverage that encourage civic engagement while sparking political change.

Donna West, Chair of Clark County Democrats, became politically active as a teenager marching for the Equal Rights Amendment and in support of Roe v. Wade. She now works to elect Democrats up and down the ticket in each election. Donna is an active volunteer with organizations who partner with the Democratic Party such as Planned Parenthood and Battle Born Progress.

Laura Xuereb co-chairs the Sister District Project's phone banking group and has been working to flip state legislatures from red to blue because "it was the only way to stay calm."