Welcome Stephanie!

We hired our first Executive Director, Stephanie Noguera, who started today! Given that the core service of GAIN Power is our career center, it was no surprise that we received hundreds of qualified applicants. After a comprehensive review of the applicants, screening, and several interviews, we made an offer. Please join me in congratulating and welcoming Stephanie to our team. 

Stephanie’s career experience includes organizing, Political Tech outreach/ training, grassroots fundraising, event planning, and partnership building. Stephanie has worked in state, local, and federal government for nonprofits, campaigns, and party committees, as well as as a consultant. She understands our rich and complex progressive ecosystem from her lived life experience. She is known for her energetic leadership, strategic planning, and driven programming. Career highlights include leadership roles in numerous presidential campaigns and serving as Director of Community Engagement for former U.S. Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III from 2013 to 2019. Additionally, she has worked with several national advocacy organizations and built strong partnerships with other progressive groups.

I briefly met Stephanie while she was managing their partnership at ActBlue. She was instrumental in implementing their support around our awards program in 2022. I’ve gotten to know her much better over the last few months during our interview process. During this, much stood out about Stephanie, but nothing more than her infectious positivity and passion for our work. 

What’s Next For Me

As the founder of Democratic GAIN and now GAIN Power, I’ve spent over 20 years investing money and time, never drawing a salary or retainer, and I love every minute of working on it. But I also love the voter contact and advocacy work I’ve done and want to continue doing. I’ve always been passionate about mail, collateral, and digital communications for progressive organizations and campaigns and will focus more on this through the 2024 elections.

I co-founded Amplify Power in 2022 as a majority-minority and majority-women-owned firm to build a culturally competent creative communications agency. I plan to spend more time building our firm and servicing clients there. With so much at stake, I want to focus more on winning elections in 2024. (Please let me know if you need help with your print and mail needs this cycle.). This doesn’t mean I won’t continue working on GAIN Power – it just means my role and focus will narrow. I will work closely with Stephanie to scale our work to meet our ever-changing ecosystem’s demands and needs. I want to focus more on making our work sustainable and go deeper on a few specific initiatives, including new programs planned with our allied 501c-3 Global GAIN. Stephanie will be responsible for the day-to-day management of GAIN Power, directly overseeing our staff, communications, partnerships, events, and core programs. These include our career center and events, Powerful IDEA Awards, Democracy Expo, and growing content site. We both have new ideas and look forward to sharing them and collaborating on our collective work. Words can’t fully express how excited I am to have a full-time dedicated leader at the helm of GAIN Power and for the new capacity she brings to our work. 

It’s just shy of four years since Democratic GAIN ended and GAIN Power launched. The change was much more than a rebranding. It was a reincorporation and reimagination of our work in this world. Since then, over 5,000 organizations have used our platform, including more than 3,200 unique employers, and our listservs reach close to 100,000 progressive staff and activists. 

This is another reflection moment and a chance to expand our work, which has never felt more important. Steph and I have some exciting ideas and plans to make our work more impactful. 

Celebrating 20 Years of GAIN

June will mark 20 years of GAIN – 16 as Democratic GAIN and four as GAIN Power, and we’ll celebrate the third annual Powerful IDEA Awards. Look for a save-the-date in the next few days with more details, but so you know, it will be on June 26th in Washington, DC, and we hope you’ll be a big part of celebrating these milestones. 

Finally, if you still need to submit, please get your nominations in for the Powerful IDEA Awards. I decided yesterday to keep the nominations platform open for two more weeks since our event is two weeks later this year, and we hope you’re all part of it!