My first experience with activism was in 1993, when I was in grade school in the south suburbs of Chicago, attending the local Amnesty International group meetings with my older sister and volunteering to get petitions signed at local concerts. As we received letters from prisoners of conscience thanking us for helping them get an extra meal, or a new hearing, or freedom, I learned an important lesson: this stuff works.
Now I have more than 15 years of leadership success at one of America’s most active and innovative labor unions. I’m passionate about social justice, and I have skills and deep experience to help strategic campaigns make the best decisions to win long-term gains.
I’m also an experienced culture organizer, helping create and run DC Bike Party and helping to calibrate activities for the Burning Man theme camp and community, Feed the Artists.
To discuss organization, campaign or campaign-data projects and how I might help, send me a note.
Condensed Experience:
Organizing Data Coordinator – Designed, implemented, and presently helping manage a comprehensive strategy to support Service Employee’s International Union’s organizing work. Team building, staff development, major event operations, GOTV, campaign analytics, data administration, organizational change, vendor relations. Experience with digital, field, and mail campaigns; managing new organizing, member outreach, and political staff and operations.
Research Coordinator – Opposition research, Market-Industry research for long-term campaign strategy, municipal-level regulatory procedure research, and stakeholder empowerment.
Politics – From power analysis to GOTV Operations , strategic plans to daily technical and tactical support, every election cycle since 2004
Organizational Equity – Leveraging HR data that “we already have” to inform an organization-wide effort to identify, understand, and resist institutional racism, sexism, and homophobia, and to lift up staff historically impacted by such structures.
Fun projects:
DC Bike Party, Co-Founder and Organizer
SoundBike DC, designer and DJ
Feed the Artists, Chef de Spreadsheet.
Education:
- MA, International Cultural Studies from Nottingham Trent University
- BA, Communication from Loyola University of Chicago.
danny.lesh 