Grassroots Campaigns, Inc. Canvass Leadership Staff

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Click here to meet field leadership staff

Click here to meet on-the-ground staff

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Sarah Hazel
Regional Canvass Director
Seattle, WA

Sarah graduated from Lafayette College in 2005 where she was involved in student government and campus activism. Searching for a way to make a larger impact, Sarah started working with Grassroots Campaigns as an Assistant Director in Philadelphia fighting to end the Bush Administration's Clear Skies Initiative. Since then, Sarah has run various canvass campaigns, building up membership for the Democratic National Committee and the ACLU, and training activists to raise over $500,000. She headed to the Midwest in 2006 as a Lead Organizer with MoveOn.org's Call for Change Campaign. Her team of organizers trained dedicated volunteers to get out the vote in targeted House and Senate races. Sarah is now based in the Emerald City, Seattle, where she works as a Regional Canvass Director overseeing three of Grassroots Campaign's West Coast offices.

Meg Ahearn
Regional Director
Boston, MA

Meg joined Grassroots Campaigns after graduating from Ohio's Kenyon College in 2007 with a degree in International Studies. 

Her commitment to US politics began as she waited in the longest voting line in the country in Nov. '04, and it has been growing steadily ever since. 

After working as a campaign director in Chicago, IL, Meg began overseeing offices in the mid-west and south east as a Regional Director.  So far Meg has worked on 8 vital social issue campaigns -- 2 of which were launched out of her offices --  and helped win the 2008 election by registering voters and organizing volunteers in the key swing states of FL, VA, and CO.

Meg moved to Boston headquarters at the start of 2009 to serve as liaison between Grassroots Campaigns and the many fantastic organizations we partner with.

Steve King
Regional Director
Boston, MA

Steve joined Grassroots Campaigns in 2004 by way of American University. After working in polling operations for Quinnipiac University Polling Institute during the early Bush era, he decided it was time to harness public opinion for change rather than simply measuring it.

After working as a canvass director in CT and MA in 2004, Steve joined the central staff of GCI in 2005 to focus on organizational development. In 2006, Steve served as the National Recruitment Director, spearheading the effort to build a national team of organizers to take back congress in the ’06 midterms. Currently, Steve serves as the Regional Operations Director for the East Coast canvass offices.

As Regional Director for the East Coast, Steve now works with the local canvass directors in Boston, New York, and Washington, DC, giving guidance over the phone and running frequent on-site trainings to help new Canvass Directors run the biggest and most successful outreach efforts possible.

David Hackman
Regional Canvass Director
Seattle, WA

After graduating from Kalamazoo College in 2005, David decided he couldn't sit back and watch the GOP run rampant and reckless through the country. Starting as a canvasser in the Philadelphia office in late ’05, David has had the opportunity to work in a variety of roles on a variety of campaigns. Whether he was working with Environmental Action to stop heinous environmental policy, the DNC to take back Congress, or the ACLU to reinstate the Constitution, David has been excited to see individual people all over the country take a broader interest in our future.

Patrick Stearns
Regional Canvass Director
Berkeley, CA

Patrick Sterns was born and raised in the Bay Area of Northern California. Patrick's first experience came at the age of six, when he led a group of his friends in a march around Oakland's Lake Merritt in support of Bill Clinton's candidacy. Surprisingly, all two of his friends showed up and they made the paper. Years later, after traveling the world and completing his education in International Political Economy, he watched Bush win reelection in 2004 and decided that the time had come for him to make a career out of political activism. During college, he helped found an NGO dedicated to developing youth leaders and facilitating conflict resolution workshops in parts of the world that had seen divisive ethnic or civil violence, such as Bosnia, Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Oakland. This experience gave him organizing, fundraising and recruitment experience that he brought to Grassroots Campaigns in the summer of 2006, opening the Seattle Canvass office and helping win back the House and Senate. He has since become the western Regional Director, training hundreds of activists and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars from small donors. When he isn't canvassing or building the office, he enjoys hiking with his dog Nikita and creating electronic music.

Michael Moeder
Regional Canvass Director and Roving Recruiter
New Orleans, LA

In 2004, Michael Moeder made his first foray into electoral politics working with the Democratic Party in Colorado, leading a team of volunteers in a Get Out the Vote Effort. He knew he could not stop at this election and in 2006 Michael joined Grassroots Campaigns on the MoveOn.org Call for Change Campaign. Determined not to have any regrets after that election, Michael became the number one volunteer recruiter in the country on that campaign. In 2008, Michael was the Lead Director of the New York City canvass office. His office trained hundreds of canvassing staff and recruited thousands of small donors, raising over a million dollars. It was the largest office of it's kind and helped make history when Barack Obama won the election on November 4. For some reason, Michael was not as excited as he thought he should be - although this battle had been won there was still so much to rebuild. That night he found his feeling of unrest was best described by Obama himself who said, "This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change." Micheal currently resides in the South and is gearing up recruitment efforts with Grassroots Campaigns, while overseeing the Washington, D.C. and Boston canvass offices.

Erik Shoemaker
National Canvass Administrator
Boston, MA

Erik joined GCI in May of 2007, after graduating with a degree in Political Science from the college of Wooster. Since '07, Erik has worked on a variety of projects in the Midwest and on the East Coast. As a director in D.C. Erik helped launch a campaign on behalf of the League of Conservation Voters that elected progressive Democrat, Donna Edwards, to Congress. During the 2008 election cycle, Erik started up and ran GCI's fundraising office in Minneapolis, MN, which identified thousands of small donors and volunteers in Minnesota for the Democratic National Committee. After this he ran a voter registration office in the Detroit area with MoveOn.org Political Action and oversaw get-out-the-vote efforts in Cleveland, Ohio. Since the election, Erik has had a more behind the scenes role with GCI. He is currently based in our central office in Boston, and works with our national leadership, canvass offices and finance staff to ensure that our projects on the ground run as smoothly as possible.

 

 

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