Grassroots Campaigns, Inc. Canvass Leadership 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 Campaigns’s West Coast offices as she works to develop staff and get ready for the ’08 election.

Robert Peek
Regional Canvass Director & Client Services
Chicago, IL

Robert graduated in 2002 from Indiana University with a degree in Environmental Sciences. For three years he ran environmental campaign offices in New Mexico and Pennsylvania, before jumping on board with Grassroots Campaigns because he, "was getting frustrated working to defeat bad legislation all the time and wanted to help elect a new Congress."

Robert worked as a recruiter across the Midwest looking for talented soon to be college grads to take on positions with Grassroots Campaigns. He then ran the 2006 Chicago canvass office, was a Lead Organizer for MoveOn in the fall of 2006 and has been Regional Directing and doing client relations since the election.

Karla Pippa
National Canvass Recruitment Director
Philadelphia, PA

When Karla Pippa graduated from Tulane University in 2003, she was committed to working for positive change for this country. After her graduation, Karla worked with an environmental non-profit for two years in Maryland. In 2004, outraged at President Bush’s continued disregard for the environment, she decided to dive into electoral politics and help with the Presidential election. Karla started with Grassroots Campaigns as a Lead Field Organizer for Grassroots Campaigns’s get-out-the-vote efforts in partnership with MoveOn.org Political Action, in the all-important swing state of Pennsylvania.

Over the past three years, Karla helped found and direct Grassroots Campaigns and MoveOn’s ongoing organizing campaign, Operation Democracy. She oversees six staff organizing in 15 states, pressuring our elected officials to forward a progressive agenda on issues like the War in Iraq, universal healthcare, and global warming. In September of 2006, Karla and other experienced organizers took the momentum from Operation Democracy and launched Call for Change, which contacted over 182,000 voters from 40 offices nationwide.

As the Lead Organizer for Pennsylvania, Karla and her sevenfield staff produced a combined total of over 12,000 voter contacts to key voters in the 60+ targeted House and Senate races across the country. She is looking forward to employing these successful strategies in the 2008 election to turn things around for our country.

Amanda Meier
National Central Staff
Boston, MA

After graduating from the University of Colorado in 2006 with a degree in international relations, and experiencing firsthand the effects of President Bush's failed foreign policy, Amanda answered a Grassroots Campaigns ad for “Campaign Jobs to Elect Democrats!” Shortly thereafter, she joined the Denver canvass team as a Field Manager, canvassing, orchestrating logistics and training staff in the field for the Democratic National Committee's campaign to take back Congress.

Following the 2006 elections, Amanda became an Assistant Director in Denver on an environmental campaign, where she canvassed for energy independence. In the spring of 2007, she became the Denver Canvass Director fundraising for the DNC's 50 State Strategy. During that campaign, she led an office of 25 canvassers who contacted 40,000 people, raised over $125,000 and signed up 1,000 volunteers. Currently, Amanda is based in Boston where she is working to ramp up Grassroots Campaigns operations for the 2008 election season.

Meg Ahearn
Regional Canvass Director
Chicago, IL

Meg graduated in 2007 with degree in International Studies from Kenyon College. Although it may sound strange, she considers herself lucky to have waited in the longest voting line in the country in Nov. '04.

After seeing voting machines break, being pressured to cast a less-reliable paper ballot, and knowing similar issues across Ohio sent her country four more years in the wrong direction, she realized how much
work needs to be done before Nov. 2008. After graduation, she wanted not only to maximize her impact on the next general election, but also to reverse the damages that have already been done.

Since starting as Assistant Director of the Chicago office in September, Meg has trained hundreds of new activists on how to protect our civil liberties and fight global warming. As one of the first Grassroots Campaigns staff to work in the field on behalf of Save the Children, she helped launch a new and successful anti-poverty campaign. Now, as the midwest Regional Director based in Chicago, she is inspired every day by the staff she works to develop and train.

Steve King
Regional Canvass 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 to simply measure it. Steve directed the Hartford, CT and New Haven, CT canvasses in our inaugural year, and then joined the Central Command team in Boston. As National Recruitment Director, he spearheaded the effort to build a national team of organizers who helped swing control of Congress in the 2006 midterms. In 2007, he returned to his canvass management roots to help us expand for the next Presidential cycle – i.e. the one we'll WIN.

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 at Berkeley, 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.

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