Markos Moulitsas Zúniga

Founder, Daily Kos

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga is founder and publisher of Daily Kos, the largest progressive community blog in the United States. Named "the single most successful entrepreneur of the progressive movement" by NY Times magazine writer and author Matt Bai, Moulitsas is also co-author of the critically acclaimed book Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics, author of Taking on the System: Rules for Radical Change in a Digital Era, a contributing columnist to Newsweek Magazine and a weekly columnist at The Hill newspaper. He was named one of the 100 Most Influential Hispanics in the world by People en Español, clocked in at third in Forbes' Web Celeb 25 rankings, and was listed 26th in PC World's list of the "Most Important People on the Web".

Moulitsas was born on September 11, 1971, in Chicago, IL. The son of a Salvadoran mother and Greek father, Moulitsas spent his formative years in El Salvador (1976-1980), where he saw first-hand the ravages of civil war. His family fled threats on their lives by the communist guerillas and settled in the Chicago area.

After high school, Moulitsas served in the U.S. Army (1989-92) as a 13P -- Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) Fire Direction Specialist. He trained at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma and served the remainder of his three-year enlistment in Bamberg, Germany. While he entered the Army as a Republican, he abandoned the GOP soon after his enlistment.

Moulitsas earned two bachelor degrees at Northern Illinois University (1992-96), with majors in Philosophy, Journalism, and Political Science and a minor in German. He subsequently earned a J.D. at Boston University School of Law (1996-99) before deciding that it would be a cold day in hell before he ever worked as a lawyer.

He headed West to the San Francisco Bay Area to make his dot.com millions but got nowhere. He worked as a project manager at a web development shop when, in 2002, he started Daily Kos. Moulitsas flirted with political consulting in 2003, but that didn't last long, and he has focused on Daily Kos full-time since early 2004.

In addition to running Kos Media, LLC, which publishes Daily Kos, Moulitsas is also founder of venture-backed SB Nation network of sports blogs. He's an avid pianist and composer.

Moulitsas has been happily married since 2000. He has a wonderful boy, Aristotle, born in November 2003 and is ridiculously in love with his daughter, Elisandra, born in April 2007.

Will Rockafellow

(Wilburtronic)

General Manager

Will was born a Midwestern river rat in 1973. He grew up on a steady diet of corn, fried catfish, and basketball. After getting a B.A. in journalism, he moved to Colorado, where he fell in love with full moon descents down Loveland Pass and finally discovered good American beer. His wife convinced him it was a good idea to move to the Bay Area. On his first visit, he knew she was right and took a mental note to listen to her always. His previous jobs include booking bands, working in record stores, selling advertising, accounting for very large numbers, and finally settling on a career in the book biz after relocating to Berkeley in 2000. In 2006, he helped usher Glenn Greenwald’s How Would a Patriot Act? on to the New York Times Best Sellers list. He then became a Kos Fellow and founded Vaster Books with Kos and Jane Hamsher. There he published Marcy Wheeler’s Anatomy of Deceit and began to handle some tasks on the business side of Daily Kos. He continues to connect authors with publishers, but now works full time as the General Manager of Daily Kos. He sits on the board of the Kos Fellowship Program, is an advisor to Netroots Nation, and served on the executive team of the The Big Tent Denver. He has a son, Jude, who has his father’s knack for ending up in the ER.

Susan Gardner

(SusanG)

Executive Editor

Susan Gardner is a native Southern Californian, born in 1958. She attended Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and returned to California to work for the Riverside Press-Enterprise Company as editor and publisher of one of its large community weekly newspapers during the 1980’s. After taking a decade and a half off to raise a family, she returned to politics and writing via Daily Kos several years ago and became a contributing editor in 2006.

She’s also been a freelance editor and writer, general manager of a special education curriculum company and the exhausted mother of four children. She lives in Berkeley, California.

In 2009 and 2010, she served as a Fellow in the Poynter Institute's Sense-Making project, a Ford Foundation-funded program that is studying the integration of new media and democratic values.

Barbara Morrill

(BarbinMD)

Managing Editor

As Barbara entered her 40's, she was a stay-at-home mother of two who spent her time helping with school projects and chauffeuring kids to soccer or lacrosse. Soon after the 2000 selection of George W. Bush as POTUS, she got her first computer, discovered the internets and a shared outrage. Now she's a stay-at-home mother of two who spends her time helping with school projects, chauffeuring kids to soccer or lacrosse, and writing about politics and the media for Daily Kos from her Maryland home.

David Nir

(DavidNYC)

Political Director

David Nir (DavidNYC) is Political Director of Daily Kos. As PD, David is responsible for the site's elections coverage, polling operations, race ratings, and the "Orange to Blue" fundraising list.

David has been a member of Daily Kos since 2002, and in 2003, he used the site's new diary feature as a launching pad for his own blog, the Swing State Project. SSP began life as a site devoted to covering developments in the "swing states" in the 2004 presidential race. After the election, Markos asked David to join the front page of Daily Kos as a Contributing Editor. David also continued to publish SSP, which turned its attention to covering "downballot" elections. Its focus has remained there ever since, and SSP developed into a premier Democratic blog devoted to the electoral horserace.

In 2011, Markos hired David to serve as the site's Political Director. The Swing State Project became part of Daily Kos, rebranded "Daily Kos Elections." David, born in 1977, is a lifelong New Yorker and Democrat, an attorney, and a die-hard Mets fan.

Joan McCarter

(aka mcjoan)

Senior Political Writer

Joan McCarter serves as the Mountain West representative for the Daily Kos staff writing from her home in Idaho, where she returned after long stints in Portland, Washington, D.C., and Seattle. She worked in both the district and Capitol Hill offices of then Congressman and now Senator Ron Wyden from 1987 until 1993, and worked on congressional campaigns in Oregon and Idaho. She left politics in 1995 to obtain a master’s degree in Russian studies from the University of Washington where she worked as a writer, editor, and instructional designer after obtaining her degree. But she couldn't resist the siren song of politics when the nation went crazy and the Supreme Court selected George W. Bush president, and she found herself at Daily Kos. Once politics in the U.S. becomes rational again, you might find her actually putting that master's degree (and huge student loan debt) to work writing on Russia. She's been a contributing editor at Daily Kos since 2006, and became Senior Policy Editor in 2010.

Jed Lewison

Senior Political Writer

Jed lives in southeast Louisiana near the Mississippi border where he tracks national politics for Daily Kos with an emphasis on video. In recent years, Jed has lived in San Diego, Las Vegas, and Washington, DC, but he's spent most of his life in the Seattle area and is a die-hard Seattle sports fan. He was born in North Carolina in 1973 and graduated from Yale University. Before getting involved with online media, Jed was a marketing executive at the Seattle-based software firm RealNetworks and was communications director for U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell.

Timothy Lange

(Meteor Blades)

Senior Political Writer

Meteor Blades is the on-line moniker of Timothy Lange, born in 1946. He has been politically active since 1964 when he participated in voter registration in Mississippi with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee in Freedom Summer. He was involved as an organizer in Students for a Democratic Society and, for 16 years, as a member of the American Indian Movement. He was incarcerated at the Industrial School for Boys in Golden, Colorado, for 23 months and spent 13 months at a federal prison camp for refusing the draft.

His most serious political campaign work was in third-tier paid positions for Pat Schroeder and Tim Wirth during their first election efforts in 1972 and 1974, respectively.

In 1973, together with 14 other women and men, he co-founded and served on the board of the Boulder Valley Clinic, one of the nation's first nonprofit abortion providers, which remains in operation today. He has been a reporter, editor and publisher for both alternative and mainstream publications, finishing his three decades in journalism at the Los Angeles Times. Over the years, he has broken stories about U.S. involvement in Guatemalan genocide, "Star Wars" technology, federal "Crisis Relocation" plans, leaking uranium mills and other environmental disasters, including destructive development in coastal Bali. He now lives just south of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Michael Lazzaro

(Hunter)

Senior Political Writer

As a Daily Kos contributing editor, Michael Lazzaro —a.k.a. ”Hunter”—has gained a reputation for passionate, explorative, and offbeat progressive writing. His wide-ranging essays and editorials are alternately probing and combative, provide stirring defenses of progressive and liberal ideals, and frequently explore the underlying dynamics of the progressive and liberal online communities themselves.

An Internet consultant who currently makes his home in rural Northern California with his wife, child, and a varying assortment of animals, Michael helped design and build some of the very first e-commerce sites on the emerging World Wide Web.

David Jarman

Daily Kos Elections

David Jarman was an editor at the Swing State Project (under the nom de blog Crisitunity), and with SSP's orange-ification, is now editor of Daily Kos Elections. Like many other Daily Kos editors, he went to law school and then somehow never got around to practicing; he is, however, co-author of several somewhat-interesting real estate law textbooks. In the interest of full disclosure, his last employment as a paid political professional was canvassing on behalf of Mike Kopetski in 1990 in Oregon's 5th district. He lives in Seattle with his wife and two children.

James L

Daily Kos Elections

James L, a team member of the Daily Kos Elections crew, became an editor at the Swing State Project in 2006, when he was promoted straight from the comments section to the front page by an apparently desperate David Nir. In addition to his time served at the helm of SSP, James worked as a research intern at Talking Points Memo in New York and as the online coordinator for the Alberta Liberal Party. James is currently working at a law firm and studying for the bar in Edmonton, Alberta.

Jeffmd

Daily Kos Elections

Growing up in DC and its nearby suburbs, Jeffmd has always had an inclination for politics. After trying his hand interning at the DCCC and a congressional office, he discovered he was more content with (and, likely, better suited to) a more quantitative approach. Jeff focuses on data analysis and presentation for Daily Kos Elections (much as he did for its predecessor, the Swing State Project), and is fortunate enough to have a job where he can spend his time doing much of the same — though not in the political realm. The "md" in his nom de blog refers not to his occupation (Jeff is, in fact, a consultant), but to his home state of Maryland (though he has fully embraced his adopted home town of Chicago).

Dreaminonempty

Daily Kos Elections

Dreaminonempty is frequently flabbergasted by the behavior of Americans, and in desperation turns to digging deep into the polls to try to figure out what people are thinking and why. Standardized career testing in high school suggested cartography for a career, but sadly the guidance counselor had never before heard the term. Adrift in the academic system, after collecting several degrees, the appeal of an interminable future writing grant proposals paled compared to the joys of changing diapers and wiping snotty noses. Dreaminonempty likes living where the trees are the right height, cooking, and the gratuitous use of color.

Laura Clawson

(Miss Laura)

Labor Editor

Laura Clawson, born at the very end of 1976, graduated from Wesleyan University, has a PhD in sociology from Princeton, and has taught at Dartmouth College and the Princeton Theological Seminary. Politics were always an important part of Laura's life - her early memories include a strike picket line, a gay pride march, and untold Democratic Socialists of America potluck dinners. She participated in the first AFL-CIO Union Summer and other political activities during college, but was not part of an active political community in 2003 when, with great relief, she discovered Daily Kos, which ultimately propelled her back into real-world political action. From 2008 to 2011 she was senior writer at Working America, community affiliate of the AFL-CIO.

Mark E. Andersen

(Kodiak54)

Daily Kos Labor

Born in 1967, Mark Andersen is a U.S. Army Veteran who served during the cold war, spending two years in Wildflecken, Germany. During time spent at OP Alpha, he watched the Soviets watch us watch them (exciting duty!). He then spent the remaining two years of his time with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky.

His first experience writing was right out the the US Army in English 101, when a professor told him that he would never pass her class (he did, with a C-). That experience stopped him from writing for a good 15 or so years. He returned to school much later in life, received his Bachelor's in 2006, and an MS in Professional and Technical Writing from the University of Wisconsin – Stout in 2012.

Mark credits his dad, a Teamster, for putting the fire in his soul for the rights of workers and the downtrodden. Both of Mark's parents were children of the depression and instilled much of their generation's values in him. He is the single father of a son. He joined the Daily Kos community in 2006.

Arjun Jaikumar

(brownsox)

Contributing Editor

Arjun Jaikumar is a writer and political professional currently splitting his time between Washington, DC and his home state of Massachusetts. He has been a contributing editor at Daily Kos since December 2007, focusing primarily on electoral politics. From 2009 to 2010 he took a leave of absence from Daily Kos to work at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in Washington. Arjun holds a B.S. from Northwestern University, and will be pursuing a J.D. from Columbia Law School starting in 2011. He is a devout fan of the Boston Red Sox, the New England Patriots, and Arsenal Football Club. Born on May 26, he shares a birthday with Daily Kos.

DarkSyde

Contributing Editor, 2006

Stephen DarkSyde is a 40 something former stock and bond trader and one time moderate conservative. He grew up in the Southwest and has long been fascinated by science, particularly evolutionary biology, physics, and astronomy. As the scope of incompetence and malfeasance in the Bush Administration and the wider Neoconservative Republican Party became evident throughout 2003, Stephen began reading and writing on blogs. In short order, he rejected the existing incarnation of the GOP and joined forces with progressive bloggers. He still considers himself a political neophyte, and tends to write mostly about science and science policy, with only occasional forays into political commentary. Today, he lives in Florida near the Kennedy Space Center with his lovely wife Mrs. “DS,” a cat named Kali, and a dog named Darwin.

David Waldman

(Kagro X)

Contributing Editor, 2007

A participant in online communities since the early 80s, David found Daily Kos some time back in mid-2003 and has stuck around ever since. A non-practicing attorney, a former Capitol Hill aide and Hotline staff writer (back when Chuck Todd was an intern), David now works in marketing so that he will not be eligible to answer telephone surveys. He has developed a particular interest in lending to the discussion the procedural knowledge he gained from C-SPAN immersion therapy during his days on the Hill, and as a result holds the world record for Longest Online Series on Parliamentary Maneuvers that Didn't Happen, namely, the Senate's "nuclear option." David is married to a moderate Democrat who once helped launch FOX News, and worked for the parent company of Eagle/Regnery Publishing, though in fairness, she was young and needed the money. The children are being raised as Democrats, so there is no need to call the authorities.

Greg Dworkin

(DemFromCT)

Contributing Editor, 2004

Along with DHinMI, Trapper John and Meteor Blades, Greg Dworkin, M.D., b. 1954, is a member of the class of 2004, although he’s been active on the site since pre-Scoop days. Areas of special interest include polling data, Iraq and bird flu.

Dr. Dworkin is a founding editor of Flu Wiki (www.fluwiki.info) and its sister site, the Flu Wiki Forum (www.newfluwiki2.com). Since its inception in June 2005, Flu Wiki has grown into an international clearinghouse of pandemic influenza information and links, presented in four languages and accessed from six continents. One measure of the success of the site is the 2 million visits and 10 million page views recorded since its inception, indicating a robust visit depth by its viewers. Flu Wiki has been cited for excellence by diverse sources such as Science magazine and the Harvard Business Review, and linked by local public health departments, NGOs and media sources. Dr. Dworkin has lectured on the topic of Flu Wiki and the internet at the UCLA School of Public Health and been invited to present at the Seasonal and Pandemic Influenza Conference 2007 (jointly sponsored by the Infectious Disease Society of America and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) on Flu Wiki’s volunteer community projects.

Dr. Dworkin is Chief of Pediatric Pulmonology and Medical Director of the Pediatric Inpatient Unit at Danbury Hospital in Danbury CT, where he has been in clinical practice for eighteen years. He serves on the Danbury city and school Pandemic Flu Task Forces. He holds academic appointments as Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at New York Medical College and Adjunct Assistant Clinical Professor of Allied Health Science at Quinnipiac College. His clinical areas of expertise include respiratory illness in the pediatric population, and the implementation of asthma education programs for the public and for health professionals. He has also served on Connecticut’s statewide asthma task force and authored articles on various aspects of pediatric asthma care. He is the Course Director for the American Heart Association’s Pediatric Advanced Life Support course administered through the Danbury Hospital Community Training Center.

Dr. Dworkin received his S.B. in Life Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his medical degree from Albany Medical College. His internship, residency, chief residency and pulmonary fellowship were completed at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.

Georgia Logothetis

(Georgia10)

Contributing Editor, 2006

Georgia Logothetis is a strategist specializing in citizen lobbying, online advocacy and digital marketing. She began her political career as a blogger during the 2004 election and was later selected to be a Contributing Editor at DailyKos.com. In the spring of 2006, she was profiled in the Chicago Reader as "one of the most influential bloggers on the Internet." As an attorney and organizer, she takes particular interest in the topics of campaign finance reform and voter protection. During the 2010 election, she served as Director of New Media for the Giannoulias for Senate campaign. She currently serves as Associate Director of the Hellenic American Leadership Council.

Mark Sumner

(Devilstower)

Contributing Editor, 2007

Mark Sumner is the author of 33 books including both fiction and nonfiction. His most recent publication was "The Evolution of Everything: How Selection Shapes Culture, Commerce, and Nature." He's a past winner of Writers of the Future, and has been nominated for both the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. In addition to the books, he's written many short stories and articles. One series of his books was the inspiration for the television series "The Chronicle." In his five decades, he's been a writer, coal miner, programmer, geologist, project manager, and perpetual student. He lives with his wife in a log cabin at the end of a long gravel road and practices hard at becoming a grouchy old hermit. He's worked on campaigns for thirty years, and has never risen higher than knocker on doors and maker of annoying phone calls.

Steve Singiser

Contributing Editor, 2009

Steve Singiser, who now must own the fact that he is in his late 30s, was born and raised in suburban Los Angeles, California. Great social studies teachers in his youth led him to a love of both history and politics. After flirting with a career in broadcasting, Steve elected to join them as a teacher, instead. For over a decade, he has been a History and Government teacher at an LA-area high school, and served for a decade as the head coach of its award-winning track and field program. His specialty is elections and campaigns, and he once won a CNN-sponsored election predictions contest in 1998. He makes his home in southern California with his wife, Kristina, and their two children: Cody and Makenzie. When not discussing politics, he is an avid sports fan and music fan, who isn’t sure whether to be proud or ashamed to admit to having nearly 12,000 songs on his iPod.

Jake McIntyre

(Trapper John)

Contributing Editor, 2004

Jake McIntyre was born in 1976 and raised in Buffalo, City of No Illusions, where he attended the high school that beat Tim Russert's alma mater 17 straight times in football. During the course of a generally undistinguished undergrad career at Cornell, Jake worked a number of dead-end summer jobs, which brought him to the realization that the labor movement was the only buffer between contemporary American society and Dickensian England. After Cornell, Jake moved to Honolulu, where he discovered love and the law. In 2001, he relocated to DC (along with fiancee and law degree), where he today works for a midsized labor union. He has a lovely wife, a beautiful son, and he is increasingly confident that the Bills will win a Super Bowl in his lifetime.

Armando Llorens

(Armando)

Contributing Editor

Armando is a long time member of the Daily Kos community. He is a mild mannered lawyer practicing in New York. He enjoys sports, especially Florida Gators sports. He writes about the law, the Supreme Court, the Constitution, politics and foreign policy.

Adam Bonin

(Adam B)

Featured Writer (legal and regulatory matters)

Adam Bonin, 38, is an attorney in private practice in his native Philadelphia. A participant in online communities since the mid-1980s, Adam represents this site in legal and regulatory matters, and in that capacity achieved a major victory before the Federal Election Commission in 2006, securing significant new rights for speakers on the Internet to engage in online political speech and advocacy. He contributes stories to the front page dealing with campaign finance matters and legal issues generally.

Adam is a graduate of Amherst College and The University of Chicago Law School, where Barack Obama was his election law professor. Adam serves as chairman of the board of directors of Netroots Nation, and in his spare time blogs about pop culture and miscellany at A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago.

Bill Harnsberger

(Bill in Portland Maine)

Featured Writer (Cheers and Jeers)

Bill Harnsberger, 47 going on 12, was born in Mount Vernon, Ohio, hometown of both the guy who wrote "Dixie" and 'Center Square' Paul Lynde---which explains a lot. In 1975 he and his family fled the oppressive Ford regime by moving to Düsseldorf, Germany, after which two popes died in rapid succession. Harnsberger was not charged in the incidents but was forbidden from ever again throwing lawn darts on European soil. In 1980, sensing that Ronald Reagan was poised to make everything right with the world again, he moved back to the Buckeye State, where he became the gayest Eagle Scout on record and graduated Summa Cum Leave This Campus Immediately from Otterbein College in Westerville, Ohio. He then spent seven years programming radio station WGER-FM in Saginaw, Michigan, and another 14 as senior copywriter at a Portland marketing company. He currently lives and loses arguments with Michael, his partner of 18 years. Bill started posting his weekday Cheers & Jeers column on Daily Kos in 2003. Some say he is not well.

Brooklynbadboy

Featured Writer, 2010

brooklynbadboy is 37 and proudly represents the Borough of Kings. Born and raised in Flatbush, he grew up in a traditional Protestant, Democratic, union family with its roots in the Carribean island of Trinidad.

He credits the United States Marine Corps with saving his life from the streets. In 1990, his father and uncles took him to an armed forces recruiting station where he was awed by a Marine in dress uniform. He graduated high school and signed up the very next day.

Politics has always been in his life since early memories abound of his father cursing at the TV about Reagan. A loyal, partisan Democrat of the old style, his father was a Democratic committeeman, church deacon, and shop steward. BBB credits "Pops" with shaping his political views.

Although he wanted to be a professional boxer, bbb studied business and law after leaving the Corps. He now works on Wall Street and is married to a beautiful lady who cooks just like his mother. His favorite charitable causes are the Police Athletic League and Boys and Girls Clubs which he encourages you to support.

Dante Atkins

Featured Writer, 2009

Dante Atkins was born in 1982 in Salt Lake City, but grew up in Riverside, CA. As an outgrowth of his homeschool education, Dante started learning Latin and Greek at age eight. It was shortly thereafter that Dante realized he would be a lifelong Democrat after the startling combination of watching Bill Clinton's 1992 DNC Convention and seeing the news about his Republican moral conservative Congressman Ken Calvert getting arrested for soliciting favors from a prostitute. After graduating from UCLA in 2003, Dante was originally intent on pursuing a graduate degree in Indo-European linguistics before being captivated by the candidacy of a certain Howard Dean. It was later during the Kerry campaign that Dante first found Daily Kos and MyDD while looking for the latest poll numbers, and he hasn't turned back since.

In addition to his presence on the blogosphere, Dante his also highly involved in the infrastructure of his state and local Democratic Party. He is currently a Regional Vice-Chair of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party, and was proud to serve on the committee that wrote support for marriage equality and net neutrality into the official platform of the California Democratic Party. Professionally, Dante co-owns a qualitative research firm with his brother David (thereisnospoon) but often works for progressive campaigns during election season. Dante is also obsessed with spiders, and currently resides in the Miracle Mile region of Los Angeles with Emily, his pet tarantula.

Denise Oliver-Velez

(deoliver47)

Featured Writer, 2011

Denise Oliver-Velez is currently an adjunct Professor of Anthropology and Women’s Studies at SUNY New Paltz. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1947, she currently lives in New York's Hudson Valley on a small farm with her husband, dogs, cats and roosters; growing garlic and roses, and spending time with her hobby of African-American genealogical research, when she isn't blogging.

She has worn many hats in her life, before becoming a blogger at age 60.

She has been a political activist and community organizer, was in the Civil Rights movement, women's movement, AIDS activism movement and was a member of both the Young Lords Party and the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She worked in community media and public broadcasting for many years and was a co-founder and program director of Pacifica's first minority-controlled radio station, WPFW-FM, in Washington DC. She was the coordinator of CPB’s Minority and Women’s Training Grant Program and was the executive director of the Black Filmmaker Foundation.

She has published ethnographic research as part of several HIV/AIDS intervention projects and is working on a book on the women of the Young Lords Party with co-author Iris Morales.

Denise is an active participant in several Daily Kos communities as a co-editor of Black Kos, and is an editor of Latino Kos and HIV/AIDS Action.

Scott Wooledge

(Clarknt67)

Featured Writer, 2011

Scott Wooledge is a New York City writer and activist. He has worked on many campaigns, including Obama 2008, and Hodes for Senate 2010, the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and New York's marriage equality.

Kris Froland

(exmearden)

Featured Writer, 2009

RIP

Laurence Lewis

(Turkana)

Featured Writer, 2010

Laurence Lewis is a native Oregonian, and recently returned after 25 years in California. A lifelong political activist, he first stuffed envelopes while in grade school, walked precincts for local candidates while in junior high, and his first paying job, in high school, was on a Congressional campaign. He was first paid for his writing when Rolling Stone gave him fifteen dollars for a five word poem. It remains the best rate he's ever received. He writes poetry, music, all manner of drama and fiction, and also spends a lot of time with cameras.

Jon Perr

(Avenging Angel)

Featured Writer, 2012

Jon Perr is a technology marketing consultant and writer based in Portland, Oregon. He has been blogging about politics, the economy, taxes, health care, national security, foreign policy and other issues since 2004.

Jon has long been active in Democratic politics as an organizer and advisor. His past roles include co-coordinator of MassTech for Robert Reich (2002), recruiter of tech executives to support Al Gore for President (2000) and President Clinton's call for national education standards (1997), as well as field staffer for Gary Hart for President (1984).

An executive with over 25 years of experience in end-user software, web services and mobile applications, Jon now helps his companies with corporate communications, product strategy and marketing plans. He previously served on the management teams at Ximian (later acquired by Novell), Vendavo, Intellisync (later acquired by Nokia) and Claris (now FileMaker).

Jon’s writing also appears at Perrspectives and Crooks & Liars. His work has been cited in newspapers, magazines and blogs, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Salon, Slate, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Mother Jones, The Hill, Politico and other leading publications.

Shanikka

Featured Writer, 2012

Shanikka is a middle-aged denizen of the California ‘Hood who some refer to as a whirling dervish since she’s always going a mile a minute. For more than 20 years, she has spent her working days as a lawyer while moonlighting as a lay philosopher, spiritual activist and – since 2004 -- political blogger.

After spending most of her career representing commercial and government clients, Shanikka now concentrates exclusively on pro bono service to clients in need. Her practice emphasizes the right of the poor, working and middle class to be secure in their homes. She is also known on her California home turf as a community activist and public official.

Shanikka’s blogging has evoked her steadfast commitment to economic and racial justice while addressing a variety of subjects. Law and legal ethics, housing, economic policy, religion and spirituality, womanism and politics are regular themes. Continuing the focus of her college years, she has emphasized the role of unconscious racism (particularly American anti-Black racism) in politics and society at large. She is conscious of the need to try and propose solutions when addressing problems.

Shanikka has been a regular poster at DailyKos since 2004 and was a panelist at Netroots Nation ’10 and '12. She was previously a front pager at My Left Wing and the editor of her own blog (now inactive), Ma’at’s Feather, named after the Egyptian goddess of truth, justice, and order. Just to keep it real when it comes to Ma’at, she works on keeping her heart light as a feather as much as possible in her spare time through gaming, vegetable gardening and being a doting wife, mother and grandmother. That being said, she loves nothing quite so much as a fierce night on the dance floor.

Dan Shilling

(Mother Mags)

Featured Writer, 2012

A true-blue DFH, Dan grew up in Pennsylvania and joined the Army after high school, serving in Germany and Vietnam. Courtesy of the GI Bill, he graduated from Penn State and then taught high school in his home state. Dan moved to Arizona more than 30 years ago and earned a doctorate from Arizona State University, on track to be a professor. Serendipity intervened and he fell into a job with an educational foundation, where he stayed 20 years. Dan has served on more than 50 boards and commissions – for national parks, museums, government agencies, universities, human rights groups, and other community organizations. Now semi-retired, and flunking retirement, he continues to teach, lecture, and publish on community development, environmental history, and sustainability. Dan lives in downtown Phoenix, but can often be found hiking and camping in the state’s majestic mountains and deserts. “Mother Mags” is a tribute to the family dog, who passed away the week Dan signed up at Daily Kos in 2005. At least we were able to share Randy Johnson’s perfect game, and boy-howdy did we dance.

Ian Reifowitz

Featured Writer, 2013

Ian Reifowitz is the author of Obama's America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity, which examines the president’s rhetorical attempt to transform our national identity by making it fully and equally inclusive of all Americans.

He is an associate professor of History at Empire State College of the State University of New York. His initial research area was Austria-Hungary, and his first book was Imagining an Austrian Nation: Joseph Samuel Bloch and the Search for a Supraethnic Austrian Identity, 1846-1918.

Ian has published articles in Newsday, The Daily News, The New Republic, In These Times, The Post-Star, the Huffington Post and at Truthout, among other outlets. But he has been proud to call Daily Kos his blogging home since 2004. Ian is an active member of the Black Kos community, and was thrilled to be part of a Black Kos panel at Netroots Nation 2012.

Born in Queens and raised in Smithtown, Long Island, Ian has resided in New York City since 1999. Most importantly, he is a doting father of two girls and a husband who is grateful to his wife for understanding why he spends so much time on Daily Kos.

Egberto Willies

(ProgressiveLiberal)

Featured Writer, 2013

Egberto Willies is a political activist, author, political blogger a member of the coalition executive committee of Move To Amend (MTA), vice president and member of the board of directors of Coffee Party USA, a CNN iReporter with over one million page views, a Spirit Award honoree for CNN iReport, a frequent contributor to HuffPost Live and host of the Internet radio shows, "Politics Done Right" and "Move To Amend Reports." He is a self-employed software developer, web designer and mechanical engineer who lives in Kingwood, Texas.

Egberto is an ardent liberal who believes tolerance is essential. His favorite phrase is "political involvement should be a requirement for citizenship." He believes that we must get away from the current policies that reward those who simply move money/capital and produce nothing tangible for our society. He believes if a change in policy does not occur, America will be no different than many oligarchic societies where a few are able to accumulate wealth while the rest are left out because it is mathematically impossible to catch up.

Tom Tomorrow

Cartoonist

Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins) lives in New Haven, Connecticut with his wife (a professor of modern political history at Yale University) and their seven year old son. His weekly cartoon, This Modern World, has appeared in Salon.com and approximately 80 papers across the country, including the Village Voice, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. His cartoons have also been featured in New York Times, The New Yorker, The Nation, U.S. News & World Report, Esquire, The Economist, and numerous other publications. He was awarded the first place Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Cartooning in 1998 and again in 2003. He has also been awarded the first place Media Alliance Meritorious Achievement Award for Excellence in Journalism, the first place Society of Professional Journalists' James Madison Freedom of Information Award, the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, and the Association for Education in Journalism Professional Freedom and Responsiblity Award. He is the author of eight cartoon anthologies and one children's book, and in 2009 collaborated with the band Pearl Jam to create the artwork for their latest release, Backspacer.

Jen Sorensen

Cartoonist

Jen Sorensen is a cartoonist and writer best known for her weekly comic "Slowpoke," which appears in alternative newspapers around the nation. Her work has been published in the Village Voice, Ms. Magazine, LA Times, Nickelodeon, and NPR.org. In 2010, Jen received a Grambs Aronson "Cartoonist With a Conscience" award, part of the James Aronson Awards for Social Justice Journalism given out by Hunter College. She has also won several awards from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. Her most recent book is Slowpoke: One Nation, Oh My God!


In 2008, Jen traveled to Denver to blog and cartoon the Democratic National Convention for her local paper, an experience that left her hankering to commit further acts of journalism. Among other side projects, she writes and illustrates occasional travel articles for The Oregonian. A graduate of the University of Virginia, she currently lives in Portland, OR.

Matt Bors

Cartoonist

Matt Bors is an editorial cartoonist and comic journalist living in Portland, OR. He has reported from Afghanistan and is the artist for the graphic novel War Is Boring.

Mark Fiore

Cartoonist

Pulitzer Prize-winner, Mark Fiore, who the Wall Street Journal has called "the undisputed guru of the form," creates animated political cartoons in San Francisco, where his work has been featured on the San Francisco Chronicle's web site, SFGate.com, for over ten years. His work also appears on Newsweek.com, Slate.com, CBSNews.com, MotherJones.com and NPR’s web site. Fiore's political animation has appeared on CNN, Frontline, Bill Moyers Journal, Salon.com and cable and broadcast outlets across the globe.

Beginning his professional life by drawing traditional political cartoons for newspapers, Fiore's work appeared in publications ranging from the Washington Post to the Los Angeles Times. In the late 1990s, he began to experiment with animating political cartoons and, after a short stint at the San Jose Mercury News as their staff cartoonist, Fiore devoted all his energies to animation.

Growing up in California, Fiore also spent a good portion of his life in the backwoods of Idaho. It was this combination that shaped him politically. Mark majored in political science at Colorado College, where, in a perfect send-off for a cartoonist, he received his diploma in 1991 as commencement speaker Dick Cheney smiled approvingly.

Mark Fiore was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for political cartooning in 2010, a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in 2004 and has twice received an Online Journalism Award for commentary from the Online News Association (2002, 2008). Fiore has received two awards for his work in new media from the National Cartoonists Society (2001, 2002), and in 2006 received The James Madison Freedom of Information Award from The Society of Professional Journalists.

Matt Wuerker

Cartoonist

Matt Wuerker has been POLITICO's editorial cartoonist and illustrator since its launch. In 2009 and again in 2010 he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in editorial cartooning.

Over the past 25 years, his work has appeared in publications ranging from The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times to Smithsonian and The Nation, among many others. Along the way, he's also pursued other artistic tangents that have included clay animation, outdoor murals, teaching cartooning in prison (as a visitor, not as an inmate), book illustration and even animating a number of music videos.

Matt thinks Saul Steinberg is a cartoon god and the Peter Principle explains pretty much everything, and he also thinks the maxim "If you're not confused, you're just not thinking clearly" is one of the wisest things ever said.

Matt lives in Washington, D.C., in close proximity to the National Zoo and the Swiss Embassy. Depending how bad things get, he hopes to find asylum in one or the other.

Ruben Bolling

Cartoonist

Ruben Bolling is the author of the weekly comic strip “Tom the Dancing Bug,” which is distributed by the Universal Uclick Syndicate to many newspapers.

Bolling won a 2011 Sigma Delta Chi Award from The Society of Professional Journalists, for Editorial Cartooning. “Tom the Dancing Bug” is a five-time winner of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Award for Best Cartoon, and two-time nominee for the Harvey Award for Best Comic Strip.

Ruben Bolling has authored three “Tom the Dancing Bug” compilation books, and has had original comics published in such publications as The Village Voice, The New York Times, The New Yorker and Harper’s. He's a co-host of Gweek, a BoingBoing.net podcast on popular culture, and is a frequent speaker about cartooning, humor and creativity at schools, universities and events. One of “Tom the Dancing Bug’s” popular recurring characters, “Harvey Richards, Lawyer for Children” has been sold to New Line Cinema, and Bolling is currently working on television projects.

Keith Knight

Cartoonist

Keith Knight is the award-winning creator of three comic strips, the auto-biographical "K Chronicles", the socio-political single panel "(th)ink, and "the Knight Life", a daily strip distributed by Universal Press Syndicate.

He is a recipient of the Comic-Con Inkpot Award, a Harvey Award and several Glyph Awards, and is a regular contributor to MAD Magazine. He also enjoys good BBQ.

Brian McFadden

Cartoonist

Brian McFadden has been drawing the alt-weekly comic strip "Big Fat Whale" since 2001. It currently appears in The Boston Phoenix and Portland Phoenix, and has been featured in the Cleveland Scene/Free Times, Gayzette Denver, Chico Beat, Buffalo Beast, and many other publications over the past decade.

Since June 2011, he's been drawing "The Strip," for The New York Times' Sunday Review, which replaced the venerable Week in Review section.

He lives in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

Eric Lewis

Cartoonist

Eric Lewis is a cartoonist who lives in New York City. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Newsweek, and Readymade Magazines, as well as in the Environmental Defense Fund Newsletter.

The original art for one of his New Yorker cartoons was purchased by the Guggenheim Museum. Also, one of his political cartoons was shown and read aloud on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Eric's weekly political strip, Animal Nuz, appears exclusively on Daily Kos.

Neeta Lind

(navajo)

Director of Community Building

Neeta Lind (aka navajo) is the Director of Community Building at Daily Kos, a position she has held since 2013. Neeta is responsible for developing projects to maximize the political effectiveness of our most valuable resource, the Daily Kos Community. She promotes the participation of Daily Kos users by creating and supervising various communities and community activities in order to build their engagement and participation on and offline. Neeta graduated from the University of Utah in 1982. She traveled extensively working in the fashion industry from 1982 to 1999. Since 1999, she has worked in the tech world at start-ups in Silicon Valley, where she lives.

Neeta is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation. She has been interested and involved in American Indian issues and progressive politics for many years. She has been active at Daily Kos since 2004 and has attended every Yearly Kos/Netroots Nation annual meeting since they began in 2006. In 2005, Neeta founded and currently manages SFKossacks, one of the first Daily Kos regional groups. She also formed and manages a community building series at Daily Kos that posts every morning at 7:30 AM Pacific. This series provides a forum for the development, formation and promotion of other Kossack regional groups. She is also the manager of Partners & Mentors, a group of Daily Kos volunteers who review first comments of new users and provide welcoming information to those new users. In 2010, Neeta's blogging on American Indian topics caught the attention of Keith Olbermann, who focused two segments of "Countdown" on the winter ice storm disaster in South Dakota that devastated the Lakota Reservations. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised to help the affected tribes as a result. Neeta is the founder of Native American Netroots, an online forum raising awareness about the political, social and economic issues affecting American Indians. She has led the American Indian Caucus at Netroots Nation every year since 2006 and she is the co-editor of First Nations News & Views.

Chris Bowers

Senior Campaign Director

Chris Bowers started out in politics helping to organize a union for graduate student employees at Temple University in Philadelphia. After spending time working with the AFL-CIO, he became an editor at MyDD.com in 2004. In 2007, he co-founded OpenLeft.com.

Some of his online projects have included Use It Or Lose It, Googlebomb the Elections, the Senate public option whip count, new media organizing for the 2010 financial reform bill, and the recent filibuster reform effort. Before coming on board with Daily Kos, he worked as a consultant on a wide variety of campaigns for MoveOn, Media Matters, SEIU, the PCCC, and the New Organizing Institute. From 2006-2010, he served on the Pennsylvania State Democratic Committee.

Chris grew up in Syracuse, and spent most of his adult life in Philadelphia. He currently lives in DC with wife, Natasha Chart, and son, Linus Chart.

Rachel Colyer

(RachelLive)

Campaign Director

Rachel was born in the Buckeye state, in southwestern Ohio, where her progressive world view was formed during her childhood and solidified after the 2004 elections. She followed the Script Ohio to a BA in Political Science and Mass Media Communications for Social Issues, which believe it or not, was a field of study at The Ohio State University that she did not have to make up.

Rachel served as field director for Working America, community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, working on electoral and issue politics on campaigns in OH, KY, IN, TN, DE, PA and VA. After working in the field, she moved her organizing work online as organizing and communications manager at the Media and Democracy Coalition where she worked on communication rights, media and technology policy.

Rachel has also worked with the New Organizing Institute as a teaching fellow and has held various volunteer positions, including campaign network chair at WIN- the Women’s Information Network and a 2012 fellowship with the DC Chapter of the New Leader’s Council.

Rachel has volunteered for many Ohio politicians, including Mary Jo Kilroy, Sherrod Brown and Ted Strickland. While running field campaigns, she worked on uncoordinated campaigns for too many endorsed candidates to list.

Michael Langenmayr

(mlangenmayr)

Campaign Director

Michael grew up in a working class family in New York's North Country. He was (and still is) a giant nerd with an unhealthy appetite for comic books, especially Chris Claremont-era X-Men stories, and all things Madonna. He studied journalism at St. Michael's College in Vermont and trained dogs for a year after college to help make ends meet.

The Iraq War dragged Michael into politics and the Howard Dean campaign inspired him to grassroots activism. He interned for various campaigns in Vermont before being hired to run paid canvasses in Connecticut. He returned to Vermont in 2008 to work for Democracy for America, where he would go on to be Political Director, overseeing the organization's endorsements, field program, and all online programs, including fundraising.

Michael currently lives in Burlington, VT, with his comic book collection and Madonna vinyls. His hobbies include hiking and enjoying Vermont's many local-brewed beers.

Paul Hogarth

Associate Campaign Director

Paul Hogarth grew up in Hyde Park on the South Side of Chicago, where he lived down the street from Barack Obama. While attending college at UC Berkeley, he started a "Wellstone for President" website in 1997 to recruit the Senator to run. After graduating, Paul was elected to the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board—and worked at the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, a housing non-profit in San Francisco.

He started reading Daily Kos in 2003, while volunteering on Howard Dean's campaign. After finishing law school in 2006, Paul became the Managing Editor of Beyond Chron—a blog that covers news and politics ignored by the San Francisco Chronicle. He wrote extensively for years about affordable housing, state & local budget battles and the Proposition 8 fight. In 2009 and 2012, he organized campaign volunteers who traveled to Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington to pass marriage for same-sex couples.

Paul lives in San Francisco with his baby-grand piano, and is a die-hard Giants fan.

Jason Libsch

VP Products and Technology

Jason Libsch is a technologist with a deep love for the creative and expressive aspects of information technology. He studied computer science at Wesleyan University and pursued a Masters in Art and Technology at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. As an Exhibit Developer at the Exploratorium he crafted new media and embedded electronics into exhibits which provide visitors access to inspiring natural phenomena. After working at the museum, he moved on to the internet startup world where he served as Software Architect, Technical Lead and Founder at venture backed startups, and from there to the design world as Directory of Digital Development. If he's not online, he is in the shop in his basement soldering up circuit boards or fumbling his way through woodworking projects.

Jeremy Bingham

(ct)

Lead Developer

Jeremy Bingham was born on January 21, 1977 and lives in Tacoma, Washington with his wife, eight year old daughter, and five year old son. He handles the technical side of Daily Kos. Before coming to Daily Kos, he had been working as the computer guy at a local store, taking care of an extremely heterogeneous network of computers, while volunteering as a Scoop developer and Kuro5hin admin. After his daughter was born, he found that he had exhausted his possibilities at the store (despite liking working there), and was looking for more challenging and engaging work. A prospect for a state job had fallen through, so Rusty Foster, who was working with Markos Moulitsas in his consulting business, approached Bingham about working for them. Bingham accepted the position, and when the consulting business dissolved at the end of 2004, he continued working for Moulitsas on Daily Kos.

In addition to his Daily Kos work, Jeremy Bingham is also a co-founder of the SB Nation network of sports blogs, overseeing the technical aspects of that venture. Beyond his interests in computers new and old, he is an avid amateur historian (particularly ancient Mesopotamian and classical history, WWI, and WWII, but will read up on any of it at least once) amateur astronomer, opera aficionado, and enjoys old science fiction books.

Scott Gonyea

(Straw Herring)

Lead Developer

Scott Gonyea grew up in Phoenix, AZ and began his career with computers during his middle school years. He was the spyware janitor of choice for family, friends, and even teachers. He has strong technical experience in a variety of areas, focusing on security, architecture, and coding. His background covers monolithic financial systems, distributed programming, web applications, and has worked with a variety of industries.

He now lives with his wife and two dogs in Irvine, CA and is expecting a baby in early 2014. When not behind a computer, he's probably losing a game of Table Tennis to his wife.

Elaine Lindelef

(elfling)

Systems Specialist

After graduating from the California Institute of Technology in Engineering & Applied Science, Elaine Lindelef began her career working as a staff engineer on NASA's Mars Observer Camera, a next-generation lightweight low-cost orbital digital camera, which was launched aboard NASA's Mars Observer and Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. As part of Altadena Instruments, a small leading-edge engineering firm with an active consulting relationship with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, she developed innovative packaging and structural designs for a variety of small, light, and sophisticated prototype instruments both for NASA and commercial applications.

When the World Wide Web emerged as the world's next platform, she helped found one of the first companies to build Web applications, back in the days when the first half of the sale was explaining what the internet was. Since then, she has come to love the power of databases and information technology as tools to help people communicate, problem-solve, and share information. She brings a firm philosophy to any project that technology is made to serve people, not vice-versa.

Elaine lives in Northern California, in a place where you can see the stars at night. She has served as a member of her local school board, and is also an accomplished sculptor.

John Glass

(iterology)

Developer

John Glass started out as a teacher of English and journalism at the high school level, but he made a career switch when he joined a startup in 2009 and became a software developer. He loves building things for the internet and, in hindsight, finds it hard to believe that it took him until he was in his forties to figure out that writing code is what he should be doing with his life. His interests include progressive politics, boardgames, and spreading his love for free and open source software. He lives with his wife and two boys in the Santa Cruz mountains.

Jennifer Hayden

(Scout Finch)

Director of Special Projects

As Director of Special Projects, Jennifer Hayden oversees Daily Kos events, including the annual Daily Kos party at Netroots Nation and The Big Tent at the Democratic National Convention. Other projects include merchandise, site subscriptions, general contracting for the secret Daily Kos lair, and whatever else we throw her way. Jennifer began commenting on Daily Kos in 2004, became a Contributing Editor in 2007, and began working on Daily Kos events in 2008. She managed The Big Tent in Denver during the 2008 DNC Convention and is still trying to catch up on sleep. Before joining Daily Kos, Jennifer spent most of her days working for ESPN, Major League Soccer events, the Kansas City Wizards, and professional cycling events.

Jennifer is a Kansas City native, lifelong Kansas Jayhawk fan, and currently resides in Lee's Summit, Missouri, surrounded by loving family and friends who have no idea what her job entails.

Faith Gardner

Assistant General Manager

Faith Gardner has worked as an assistant at Daily Kos since 2009. She graduated from UC Berkeley with degrees in English and Interdisciplinary Studies and currently resides in Oakland. She also teaches and tutors in an after-school program for under-resourced teens, is a musician, and has won awards for her fiction and published stories in numerous magazines and websites.