This page isn't about my experience. Only some of what's on this page is even on my résumé. This page is dedicated to what I'm passionate about –
fighting for the little guy.
In the Spring of 2022, the Virginia General Assembly sent a bill to the Governor's desk that would effectively end hemp production in Virginia – which would force many small businesses and family farms to close.
Why was this important to me?
I personally know and am fast friends with several hemp farmers around Virginia – one of which happened to be my client for my graduate school capstone project. They were beside themselves – and who can blame them? Imagine your primary source of income drying up with the stroke of a pen.
So what did I do?
I called some of my contacts from my pre-grad school career in PR and got cameras and reporters out to the farm and generate some press in an effort to get the word out about this harmful piece of legislation.
In 2019, I managed a campaign for an Independent candidate for Virginia State Senate out in Charlottesville. Our top legislative priority was criminal justice reform – specifically abolition of the death penalty.
Why was this important to me?
No area of Government interferes with independence more than the criminal justice system. It can impact anyone on any given day but it regularly consumes the poor, uneducated, those with mental illness, and the addicted. It can seize your cash without charging you with a crime, hold you in pretrial detention for months simply because you cannot afford bail, and it can ultimately end your life even while continuing to exonerate people for wrongful incarceration. Shouldn’t we spend more time making sure the system runs properly so everyone gets a fair shake and can move forward after they’ve paid for their actions?
Virginia over-incarcerates for non-violent crimes and punishes in ways that don’t lower recidivism. We advocated for measures to provide reentry programs with skill development and job placement, automatically expunge records after a finding of “not guilty,” end cash bail, eliminate mandatory minimums, cannabis prohibition, and capital punishment, require in-camera interrogations for felony investigations, and expand the use of body-worn cameras and mental health dockets.
So what did I do?
I organized events, rallies, and get-out-the-vote initiatives centered around criminal justice reform and created digital marketing ads micro-targeted to specific groups of people interested in what we had to say. I crafted messaging that emphasized our legislative priorities while convincing long-time single-Party supporters to vote for an Independent candidate.
While we didn't win, our message resonated with enough people to flip three counties previously held by our opponent for over 30 years while being outspent 14 to 1. We did it all with no institutional Party support (we were Independents) and no major donors.