Nominee's Key Links:
Bio:
Writing or Publications:
Website:
Video: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7121709280918953984/
Socials:
Agency or agencies for which nominator feels nominee is best suited:
Organization name(s) and position(s) for which nominator feels nominee is best suited:
department/agency mapper, integrator, framer, de-duplicator, merger
Policies which the nominator knows the nominee supports or in which they have expertise:
Civic revival -- unifying factions, building trust, increasing engagement and diminishing polarization
Ensuring infrastructural changes are accompanied by cultural changes and vice versa
Coherence within interdisciplinary teams
Information and resource flows within and between organizations
How entities or groups differ and overlap
Multi-scale systems integration
Hierarchy and network interfacing for organizational robustness
Multi-metric management
Dynamic maps and models
Complexity and emergent properties
Nominator's thoughts on what would make this nominee a valuable member of a future Trump Unity Government
1) Is Competent ...Ive pursued multiple projects and spinoffs, sometimes requiring vision, technical expertise, bringing others together, high degrees of improvisation, resourcefulness, communication in multiple formats to a variety of audiences, bringing together depth and breadth in distilled yet comprehensive graphics and emotional stability during crisis. From how I brought the pieces of my abstract and practical involvements together, to developing friendships bridging all demographics to figuring out what to do after my rental car was flipped during a solo road trip -- Ive trained my focus and sense of perspective which are critical for a job such as this.
2) Is Honest... When I was running for city council I spoke in the chambers about how staffing of city hall and public elections should include merit-focused anti-nepotism, conflict of interest and DEI considerations. I had noticed that the various parties running had either neglected or weaponized some of these processes for political gain.
After I had been officially hired by the Kennedy campaign in early June (I was S4K lead in MA and unofficially nationally before that) my supervisor told my co-lead and I several weeks later that our weekly metrics were being reduced to one and that we would now be paid based solely on commission rather than base pay.
I insisted through multiple channels (co-lead, supervisor, supervisors supervisor and state lead) that not only was the new metric of 26,000 students recruited a week until Election Day not possible from dead stop and during the summer but that it would destroy infrastructure and core team morale (unless changed from a linear cliff to an exponential ramp path). On top of this the commission-based pay, although theoretically making it possible to make much more if we hit those numbers, was incentivizing us towards numbers that we could not reach and which would destroy our outreach coalition out of financial self-interest (whether seeking maximum or merely survival levels of pay).
I was ignored, chastised and subordinated for insisting that the changes were unsustainable and ought to be reconsidered. When the following week we came nowhere near our new metric the plan was abandoned and we were pushed to choose new metrics rapidly. My insistence that we were once again at risk of duplicating the same error and that we needed at least a day to consider what metrics and how to measure them ultimately fell on deaf ears. These shortsighted policy and leadership changes led to a sense of confusion and alienation among the core teams student volunteers and my termination the following week.
3) Is Respectful ... I attempt to be a universal adapter that brings together and intermediates between many types of people. I know that different beliefs can be complimentary if the patience to figure out how they fit together is invested. I once hosted a podcast called Man v Mob based around these very concepts. My favorite guest Daryl Davis, who I seek to emulate, embodies this respect and patience for even others that vehemently dont reciprocate.
My involvements value freedom of speech to the core while also acknowledging that there is personal responsibility and wisdom necessary in determining how and when a message is delivered. One must learn to reconcile freedom of speech with emotional intelligence and know how to diffuse situations among those who dont. I got an early start in exercising these skills as president of my fraternity ten years ago and have been building upon that foundation ever since.
Because my curiosity often means divergence into new idea territories before practical solutions materialize, I am constantly engaging in communications where dissent and its consideration is an inherent part of continuous improvement. Its so second nature to me that I would only register and question its absence.
4) Has Integrity ... Aside from my focus on integrity within and between organizations Ive also developed a considerable degree of integration within myself. This involves seeing myself as both a whole of parts smaller than myself and a part of wholes larger than myself. Such an awareness requires a constant maturing and balancing. Emphasis on a well-roundedness of joining of perspectives means not just understanding the macro incentives that corporate interests respond to but also the micro needs hierarchy that individuals respond to. While large entities magnify our individual influence, they do so for both the good and bad in human nature.
Because I view people as complex beings deserving dignity, it is counter to my core values (light triad and heavenly virtues) when entities behave as if people exist to serve corporate, state or church interests. In reality, those super-entities derive their sovereignty from the transcendent will of the people (and must therefore contend with dissent considerately).
This is a core principle behind my advocacy and framing of the Unity Coalition bringing together populists, independents and third parties for our most critical shared reform goals. Corporate capture of institutions and civic decline go hand in hand because in the absence of civil society there is no third balance of power to offset the intertwining of enormous state and market forces.
5) Has Courage ... While thankfully I have not had to blow the whistle on high-profile corruption, I did take on both the city government and the primary opposition partys excesses when I felt that they were burning the village down to save it.
Aside from that, my growing awareness over the years of my relatively short life that all national institutions, regardless of their politics, had eroded trust and become entangled in webs of corruption -- strongly encouraged me to develop a venture called Tether. It was a self-funded passion project designed to enable joining forces across disciplines to work on projects and investigations that would re-establish civic trust.
I refined and expanded this idea for years as I worked to support myself and find mentorship on the side. While it took a degree of courage (and foolishness) to bushwhack away from a respectable career in mechanical engineering I felt like I knew too much about national and global problems and had to go to work so that the various whistleblowers and visionaries could join forces and bring about a transformative revival of our civic institutions and motivating spirit.
6) Has a Proven Record... As the national lead of college student outreach in the Kennedy campaign I was responsible for being a motivating organizer who students trusted. I brought together the early model in MA which is a national and global hub of higher ed. Next, I brought together a core team and established a summer plan to build scalable culture and infrastructure.
We recruited independent Students for Kennedy efforts from across the country to be under one banner with a common message while being sure not to disrupt what was working locally, only to try those things elsewhere that needed more development. By the time the national campaign officially endorsed us we had a lean and energized team of student leads across the country ready and eager to recruit their peers during fall semester. The org chart, information repository, critical campus map, collaboration with other outreach leads and weekly meetings kept student efforts intertwined and synchronized.
