About us

Helping down-ballot Democrats be better at the Internet

Our Mission

Tech for Campaigns’ (TFC) mission is to leverage the expanding reach of technology and digital communications to build electoral power for down-ballot Democrats throughout the United States.

To do that, we are building a lasting and permanent digital entity for the Democratic Party. Today, we build tools that help us identify and scale digital and tech best practices, and provide political campaigns with access to world-class talent to implement digital strategies needed to compete.

Our efforts are substantially, but not exclusively, focused on Democratic state parties and state legislatures working in swing districts. The candidates elected in these state and local races are responsible for the great majority of legislation that affects most Americans’ daily lives and yet consistently operate with small budgets and over-allocate to expensive, traditional media. TFC gives them access to a caliber of digital talent typically unavailable to them, providing a competitive edge. At the same time, we offer tech workers an opportunity to volunteer their skills in a meaningful and impactful way and turn political passion into hands-on involvement.

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 595 campaigns on over 940 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

Gina Pak
Gina Pak
CEO
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Home District:
CA-37

Gina is CEO of Tech for Campaigns. She joined TFC in 2022, leading TFC’s voter turnout initiative. She advises early stage mission-driven start-ups on strategic growth and prior to TFC was a founding member of Blueland, where she was CMO. Gina received her MBA from Harvard Business School and undergraduate degrees in Economics and Political Science from Stanford University.

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

Jessica was most recently CEO of Tech For Campaigns, having founded the organization in 2017. Prior, she was Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at Social Capital, a leading venture capital and investment firm and  was 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 is an advisor to several companies, sits on the board of the A. Alfred Taubman Institute at the University of Michigan and was recently named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company. She holds a Bachelor’s in Business Administration from University of Michigan and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

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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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Sarah Stanley
Sarah Stanley
Lead State Director
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Home District:
NY-08

Sarah spent most of her career in New York advertising agencies, building campaigns for household brands such as Spotify, Sour Patch Kids, and Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy. She brings expertise in data-driven marketing strategy and media, particularly digital. Her focus since leaving agency life has been on aligning herself with organizations that contribute a meaningful, positive impact on the world. In 2017, Sarah was nominated for The Drum’s 50 Women under 30, which recognizes outstanding women in digital and creative. She holds a BA in Advertising from The University of Texas at Austin.

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

Greg Dale is CEO of Tech for Campaigns. 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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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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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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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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