Meet the Team
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FounderGrowing up on a five-generation small family farm in rural Ohio, in a family deeply embedded in the local community, Abby has first-hand knowledge of the experiences and worldviews of a key population that Democrats have increasingly struggled to reach.
After studying sociology and history at Ohio Wesleyan, she moved to Washington DC to earn an MA in Democracy and Governance at Georgetown University. She joined the effort to strengthen civic infrastructure with the Urban Libraries Council, helped policymakers and advocates engage in rural spaces through the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, and led a large scale human centered design project to improve grantee experience engaging with the federal government at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Her experiences and background have shaped her work, carrying her rural roots with her while staying committed to progressive ideals, and she believes deeply in the potential of progressive organizations and campaigns to achieve ambitious goals of systemic change through a deeper understanding of the people they are trying to reach.
Our lived experiences and knowledge of behavioral science and democracy assistance provide a unique, focused, and down-to-earth expertise.
We aren’t looking for one-off transactions, we’re looking to build mutually valuable relationships over time with organizations and campaigns that are doing work we believe in.
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FounderMax is our resident behavioral scientist. He was raised in rural North Carolina by a German immigrant father and a Jewish mother, both of whom came of age in the student protests and human potential movement of the 60s and 70s. He experienced first hand how well-meaning people with different language and communication styles can struggle to understand one another and connect.
To better understand perception and mental and emotional processing, Max earned a bachelors in Neuroscience at the University of Southern California, and spent five years in a neuroscience lab studying under Dr. Antonio Damasio. After 2016, recognizing an urgent need to apply what he had learned in the real world, Max moved to Washington DC for an MA in Democracy and Governance at Georgetown University. While in DC he began working as a Social and Behavioral Science Specialist at Democracy International. In this role he helped design and implement large scale democracy assistance programs in West Africa, Eastern Europe, and South Asia, focused on strengthening active citizenship, responsible and responsive local government, and cooperation in contexts of severe polarization, democratic disillusionment, and division. He also teaches a weekend Social and Behavioral Science for Democracy and Governance course at Georgetown.
He believes that strengthening already-existing left-leaning and evidence-based initiatives with cutting edge toolkits and methods is a critical part of countering the historic threats our democracy faces.