About us

Helping down-ballot Democrats be better at the Internet

Our Mission

Tech for Campaigns’ (TFC) mission is to fight extremism and help Democrats win at scale by using advanced commercial digital marketing and data techniques.

To do that, we are building a lasting and permanent digital entity for the Democratic Party. We look for the highest ROI opportunities to utilize digital marketing and data to change electoral outcomes. Today, we run two main programs connected by one core technology tool: 1. Digital Campaigns Services provides swing-district, state level political campaigns with access to world-class talent to implement digital strategies needed to compete. These campaigns would not otherwise have access to this level of talent. 2. Digital Voter Turnout - we run a best-in-class digital voter turnout program to turnout low propensity Democrats. Turnout decides close elections. And, finally, we use our Leaning Engine platform to learn from all of our programs quickly and share that knowledge with our teams, campaigns and partners.

How TFC Started

TFC started as an idea between three tech entrepreneurs in early 2017: What if, instead of just volunteering time and money, they could volunteer their expertise in web development, social media, paid marketing, and data analysis? They created a Google Doc to share the idea with friends, and within 72 hours had 700+ volunteer signups from Silicon Valley’s most sought-after tech and digital talent. The TFC model was first deployed in 2017’s Virginia state legislative elections and has grown to have worked in scores of states and with hundreds of campaigns since.

Our Strategy

From 2009 to 2017, at the state legislative level, Democrats lost 1,000 seats and control of 39 chambers at the state level. They only gained one-fifth of those back by 2020. State legislatures control the destiny of reproductive rights, gun violence prevention, and voting rights and elections. Despite their importance, state races raise relatively little money and thus struggle to get attention from campaign professionals. TFC helps reverse this with a three-pronged strategy:

  1. Digital Talent - providing highly skilled, digital talent teams directly to swing-district state legislative campaigns.
  2. Data & Experimentation - running digital ad experiments to test new ways to target, reach voters, and understand messaging variations, often based on commercial best practices. This culminates in a best-in-class digital voter turnout program that has proven highly effective at registering harder-to-reach voters to vote by mail.
  3. Technology Tools - connecting it all are tech and data tools that help both campaign teams and TFC staff learn in real-time, test in ways they couldn’t otherwise, and understand what worked and didn’t now and in the future. A canonical database of digital best practices.

We've worked with over 700 campaigns on over 1,200 digital projects, registered over 500K people to vote by mail or vote early, and were pivotal in flipping or breaking supermajorities in 7 state chambers.

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Meet the team

Nora Levinson
Nora Levinson
CEO
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Home District:

Nora has been both a tech entrepreneur and executive and brings 17 years of experience to the table, having led and scaled businesses across consumer hardware, digital health, and climate tech sectors. She has an impressive track record of raising over $80M for her companies and has had several successful exits. She was also Board Chair at New Destiny Housing, a non-profit that secures housing for survivors of domestic violence. She holds a BS and MS from Stanford University.

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Ping Yee
Ping Yee
Director of Engineering
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Home District:
CA-13

Ping leads the in-house technology projects that help us scale up our effectiveness and impact. He came to TFC with a long history working as a software engineer, usability professional, and technologist in politics, elections, disaster response, and humanitarian relief. While at Google.org, he cofounded the Google Crisis Response team, and he has been to the field with MSF (Doctors Without Borders) in countries facing Ebola epidemics and political insecurity. Ping has a BASc from the University of Waterloo and a PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley, where he was part of the technical team commissioned by the California Secretary of State to perform a security review of the state's electronic voting machines.

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Heather McIlhany
Heather McIlhany
Lead State Director
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Home District:
VA-08

Heather brings a wealth of digital marketing experience to TFC having held marketing leadership roles at Square, Ridwell, Pie Insurance and Netflix. At Ridwell, she was Chief Marketing Officer and was responsible for all aspects of marketing for their B2C subscription recycling service. At Pie Insurance, she led go-to-market strategy, and oversaw digital, content, social, brand, SEO, email, offline, analytics, PR, product marketing, and partnerships. She holds a BA from Yale University.

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Allie Cashel
Allie Cashel
Campaign Director
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Home District:
VT- 1

A passionate relationship builder, Allie brings new campaigns and candidates into the TFC universe as the Campaign Director. She previously managed the voter engagement program at Democracy Works, helping partners leverage civc technology to mobilize their communities and increase voter turnout. Between calls with campaigns, Allie spends her winters enjoying the Green Mountains and her summers exploring the shores of Lake Champlain.

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Jessica Sanders
Jessica Sanders
Senior Analytics Engineer
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Home District:
CA-15

Jessica is a software engineer for TFC with an emphasis on data. She is focused on building tools that help campaigns learn quickly and make effective choices. Prior to joining TFC, Jessica had a decade of experience building products for applied math and data applications, first as a staff engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and then as a data scientist at an educational nonprofit. She holds a Master of Information and Data Science from UC Berkeley.

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Eric Jackson
Eric Jackson
GM Voter Turnout
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Home District:
Congressional District 11

Eric is a growth marketing leader with over 15 years of experience. He has led growth and paid acquisition at well known consumer brands like Outschool, Sun Basket and Autolist and has managed over $300M of spend across channels. Before joining the D2C world, he worked with Planned Parenthood. Eric has a Bachelor of Business Administration from Howard University.

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Julie Savransky
Julie Savransky
Director of Growth and Engagement, Volunteers
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Home District:

Julie is an experienced marketing leader who has driven high impact programs at tech companies including Meta, Uber, and Etsy. She has led dynamic teams to develop significant growth and product engagement initiatives and is passionate about applying her expertise to support democratic campaigns. Julie holds a BA from Washington University in St. Louis.

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Jim Bobowski
Jim Bobowski
State Director
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Home District:
CA - 14

Jim Bobowski is a 20+ year brand and growth marketer. Before TFC he was CMO at two startups, Texture and Citrus Lane, and a Director of Marketing for over 16 years at Capital one and Netflix, where he helped both companies achieve rapid customer and brand growth. Jim received his Masters in Business from the Haas School of Business at the University of California - Berkeley and resides in Northern California with his wife, child, and two dogs.

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Lauren Foy
Lauren Foy
Marketing and Operations Lead
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Home District:
MA-06

Lauren comes from a background of leading and building new marketing programs in high-growth tech start ups, including Drizly (later acquired by Uber). She joins the team to support volunteer acquisition and retention. Prior to joining TFC, she has been an avid activist for under-represented communities and is excited to be able to drive success up and down the ballot for progressive candidates with TFC.

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Angela Gyetvan
Angela Gyetvan
State Director
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Home District:
CA-30

Angela has been a CMO in tech, packaged goods, hospitality, and entertainment. She has held senior positions at Electronic Arts, Food.com, Evite and Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, and can also tell you quite a bit about how to shoot live sports events in 3D. Several years ago, she turned her focus to mission-driven organizations and politics, and has been responsible for branding and product marketing work for icons such as Mayo Clinic, Hazelden/Betty Ford, and the Barnes Foundation, while volunteering on the digital arms of the Obama and Clinton presidential campaigns. She holds a BA from Duke University and an MBA from the College of William and Mary.

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Annie Pecoraro
Annie Pecoraro
Project Staffing Coordinator
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Home District:
IL - 6

Annie has spent her 15+ year career uncovering and telling data-driven stories that drive positive business impact for clients across industries, and now brings her strong communication and process improvement skills to TFC. As project staffing coordinator, she’s responsible for connecting volunteers with open roles and maximizing volunteer throughput. Annie holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Management from the University of Dayton.

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Cristol Rippe
Cristol Rippe
State Director
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Home District:
OH-03

Cristol was most recently Chief Markting Officer and Chief Operating Officer at Landed. She hasheld senior marketing roles at Root Insurance and Abbott Nutrition and has lead everything from brand strategy to SEO to social media and performance marketing. She has BA from University of Pennsylvania.

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Mandy Walis
Mandy Walis
State Director
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Home District:
NY-10

Mandy has numerous years of experience in digital marketing, client management, and business operations, having held leadership positions at leading global advertising agencies. Most recently, as Chief Operating Officer at OMD US, Mandy spearheaded operational transformation across the organization. She holds a BS from Lehigh University.

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Rob Harol
Rob Harol
State Director
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Home District:
CA-37

Rob Harol brings years of experience as a digital product leader, delivering ad-supported solutions for various consumer-facing content and lead generation platforms such as Leaf Group, Prodege, and Machinima. As a metrics-driven State Director, Rob partners with campaigns to drive measurable success. He holds a B.A. from UCLA in Economics and Political Science and is a USAF veteran.

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John Dobrowolski
John Dobrowolski
State Director
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Home District:
TX-37

John is a seasoned startup executive with extensive experience in go-to-market leadership and a deep background in advertising technology and services. Before TFC, John was a general manager, overseeing Social Ads businesses for ad tech companies Kenshoo and Nanigans. He played a key role in partnerships as an early employee with MasterClass. Most recently, John ran his own executive search practice. John holds a BA in Economics from Tufts University. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, two young kids, and dog - Guapo.

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Steve Jacobs
Steve Jacobs
State Director
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Home District:
NY-18

Steve Jacobs is a digital politics veteran, having served in leadership positions both in-house and as a consultant on President Obama's 2012 campaign, Colorado Governor Jared Polis's 2018 campaign, and Bill de Blasio's 2013 race for mayor of New York City, among others. An expert in digital fundraising and mobilization, Steve partners with campaigns to make it rain and get out the vote. He holds a B.A. from Harvard University

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Punit Ijha
Punit Ijha
Ad Ops Coordinator
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Home District:
NC - 13

Punit is an Ad Ops Coordinator for TFC. He is focused on onboarding campaign partners onto Ad Platforms ensuring a smooth integration process and  leverages his technical skills to implement tracking on campaign websites, enabling data-driven decision-making. He spends his free time diving into the world of 3D immersive web experiences, crafting mind-bending digital journeys to captivate and engage audiences.

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Jessica Alter
Jessica Alter
Co-founder and Board Chair
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Home District:
MI-40

Jessica is a serial founder and investor. She works with companies to shape and scale their marketing and growth operations and is a Partner at Leap Forward Ventures. She was previously VP, BD at Figma. Prior, she was CEO of Tech For Campaigns, having founded the organization in 2017, Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at Social Capital, Cofounder & CEO of FounderDating (acquired by OneVest), the LinkedIn for entrepreneurs. Jessica led Business Development and was GM of Platforms at Bebo (acquired by AOL for $850M).  She holds a Bachelor’s in Business Administration from University of Michigan and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

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Peter Kazanjy
Peter Kazanjy
Co-founder
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Home District:
CA 12

Pete Kazanjy is a serial founder, and seasoned early stage Saas executive, advisor, and investor. Pete founded TalentBin, a category-defining talent search engine and recruiting CRM, which exited to Monster Worldwide in early 2014. Pete is passionate about HR tech, marketplaces, and tech-enabled sales and sales operations. Prior to TalentBin, Pete worked in product marketing and product at VMware, having graduated from Stanford in 2002.

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Ian Ferguson
Ian Ferguson
Co-founder
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Home District:
NY-10

Ian Ferguson is an entrepreneur and a designer in equal measure. Both analyst and artist, he believes that good design and tactical business objectives are inseparable. He currently develops software and user experiences for emerging brands in both the technology and non-profit sectors through his own creative studio, Res Facta. From 2011-2016, he oversaw product and brand development as a founder of Kitchit, a marketplace connecting diners with professional chefs for full-service, at-home dining. Prior to Kitchit, Ian was a Consultant at Bain & Co. and earned a BA at Yale and an MBA from Stanford.

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Gina Pak
Gina Pak
Senior Advisor
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Home District:
CA-37

Gina was a founding member and CMO of Blueland and VP Consumer Experience at Theory. She advises early stage mission-driven start-ups on strategic growth and marketing. Gina received her MBA from Harvard Business School and undergraduate degrees in Economics and Political Science from Stanford University.

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Greg Dale
Greg Dale
Senior Advisor
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Home District:
CA-33

After beginning his career in investment management at J.P. Morgan and First Republic, Greg worked as a product manager and account executive at Chartboost, a mobile ad platform, and was the Founding Business Lead at Myra Labs, which focuses on bringing artificial intelligence to customer care. Greg holds a BA from UC San Diego.

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meet some of our super volunteers

Apoorva Anupindi
Apoorva Anupindi
Content Marketing Manager, Aerospike

Past projects:

Dana Gulick - PA HD-97 Email Marketing
Bistra Anguelova
Bistra Anguelova
Marketing Consultant

Past projects:

TFC Ads Post Mortem 2020, Ana-Maria Ramos - TX HD-102
Krishna Esteva
Krishna Esteva
VP of Product, Super.mx

Past projects:

TFC Texting 2020, EJ Bernier - FL HD-83, Dean Phillips - MN-3
Xaviea Bell
Xaviea Bell
Senior Cloud Engineer, Box

Past projects:

TFC Dev Ops
Max Brettler
Max Brettler
Experience Designer, Slalom Build

Past projects:

Michigan House Democratic Fund, Bobby Tyler - AZ HD-6
Anela Chan
Anela Chan
Director of Data Science, Nike

Past projects:

Stacey Abrams - GA Governor, TFC Ads Post Mortem
Andy Locascio
Andy Locascio
Senior Engineer, Slack

Past projects:

Virginia House Democrats
Kyle Sherin
Kyle Sherin
Director, Growth Marketing, Right Side Up

Past projects:

Missouri Democratic Party, Dayna Polehanki - MI SD-7
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Careers

We are looking for talented people to help us reshape the American political landscape in a meaningful way.

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