Our Staff

The Principals

Lynn Allen is passionate about grassroots organizing and about assisting local Democratic organizations develop organizing tools and skills.  She brings experience from consulting and training in the business world, where she focused for years on assisting emerging leaders to develop management skills and assisted teams to learn to function effectively together.

Since jumping into the political world full time, Lynn blogged for four years on Evergreen Politics, worked for a year on Darcy Burner's campaign as Volunteer Coordinator and Grassroots Organizer, and works to bring bloggers together with Democratic elected officials. 

Carol Friends brings a fierce sense of the importance of building community from experience years ago working as an architect with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

She spent 2008 coordinating the Neighborhood Leader Challenge for the 41st LD, an amazing volunteer effort that earned her the "Rising Star" award for 2008 from the King County Democrats. Along with help from the 41st LD Chair, Barbara Geller, fellow EBoard members and Rebuilding Democrats colleagues, she created a multi-layered volunteer program that worked closely with the Coordinated Campaign. Carol recruited 14 Area Coordinators and worked with them to create a support structure for the PCOs in their area.  She is working now, between elections, to help focus the 41st volunteers on community organizing and community-based planning. 

Karen Willard has focused her keen attention and organizing attention on rural Pierce County.  She ran unsuccessfully for the legislature in 2006 and intends to run again for either legislative or Pierce County office.  In the meantime, Karen participates in County, 8th CD and 31st LD Democratic organizations.  She continually recruits and trains PCOs throughout east Pierce County. She has trained volunteers and assisted candidates to learn the ropes of running. 

Karen is currently the Washington State Democratic Central Committee rep from Pierce County and the PCO organizer for the 31st LD.

Additionally...

We are pleased to collaborate with the Northwest Progressive Institute, particularly with NPI's Executive Director, Andrew Villeneuve, and NPI's Outreach & Advocacy Director, Rick Hegdahl. When our first platform for this site proved unworkable, Andrew stepped in and moved us over to a new platform, Movable Type, which should work far better and be much easier for us not-so-tech-savvy authors to navigate.

NPI and Rebuilding Democracy are working together to help build infrastructure for Democrats and progressives in the Northwest. 

We look forward to working with other organizations and groups as well.

Kudos to Maura ...

Maura Goodwin at Infotexts Architecture worked on parts of this site for which we are very grateful.