ABOUT CATALIST

We are Progressives who live our values.

For 15 years, Catalist has been the data utility powering the progressive community. Our partners and clients contribute to this generation and the next generation of innovation in new data, new services, and new tools that help the whole community do better, smarter, and more effective work. Combining our purchasing power lowers the barriers to entry that limit small and local movements competing with big money, industry-backed special interests.

Owned by a trust, Catalist acquires data from a wide variety of sources, but we never sell data for commercial use. We are able to do this without the threat of being bought, sold, or traded to commercial or for profit purposes. 

We collaborate with data-driven civic-minded, Democratic and progressive organizations with a variety of goals: issue advocates, organizers, pollsters, analysts, consultants, campaigners, researchers, and more.

We work with the community, for the community.

The Catalist team

Catalist

OUR TEAM

The Catalist Team is comprised of more than 60 professionals with expertise in system and software development, data science and analytics, and political and issue advocacy. Tech-industry veterans lead our system and software development, Ph.D. data scientists head our in-house Analytics shop. Our Account Executives are seasoned political operatives with a wide array of political experience at the state, local, and federal levels.

We are proud that our commitment to diversity is demonstrated at all levels of the company—staff, senior management, and Board. It takes people with broadly varied backgrounds, ideas, and perspectives, as well as diverse professional and personal experiences, to develop creative, cutting-edge data solutions for the progressive community. This ideal is at the core of our work and has been a driving force behind a decade of innovation at Catalist.

Catalist Leadership Team

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Michael Frias, Chief Executive Officer
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Laura Quinn, President
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Yair Ghitza, PhD, Chief Scientist
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Molly Chapman Norton, Chief Client Officer
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Russ Rampersad, Chief Data Officer
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Jessica Humphrey, Chief Technology Officer
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Misha Zhurkin, Chief Architect
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Gary Gruver, Chief Financial Officer
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Brad Lippmann, PhD, Chief of Staff
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Chris Koelbl, Deputy Chief Technology Officer
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Julianne Kwon, Chief Legal Officer
Haris
Haris Aqeel, Senior Advisor
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Hillary Anderson, Chief Analytics Officer
Headshot of Lauren O Brien, Deputy Chief Data Officer
Lauren O'Brien, Deputy Chief Data Officer
Melody Fassino
Melody Fassino, Director of People & Culture
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Sarah Grant, Deputy Director of Analytics
Janay Cody, Senior Advisor for Data Equity
Janay Cody, Senior Advisor for Data Equity
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Nathan Harold, Director of Client Services
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Aaron Huertas, Communications Director
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Seito Yamamoto, Director of Digital Strategy
Heather Rodgers, Director of Business Development
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Dan Buttrey, Director of Data Acquisition
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Katherine Johnson, Director of Special Platforms

2006 Catalist Founded

Catalist started with hundreds of voter files from states, counties, and municipalities and developed the first ever NATIONAL VOTER FILE not owned by a political party or individual campaign

2006 NATIONAL PARTISANSHIP MODEL

First model to capture self-identification, rather than party registration

2007 THE CATALIST Q

Software for query, universe building, micro-targeting, and analysis

2008 VOTE PROPENSITY MODEL

First national model to validate better than state-based models

2014 BEHAVIORAL MODELING: VOTE CHOICE HISTORY

Catalist Vote Choice History (VCH) is a new form of statistical modeling based on actual voting  behavior, factoring in longitudinal demographics and precinct-level election results

2016 INNOVATION WITH THE POLLING CONSORTIUM

Catalist partners with GQRR and the AFL-CIO to build an architecture for aggregating polling data, that can be available for analysis by the whole community, taking the political intelligence that already exists and getting deeper

2017 THE PEORIA PROJECT

Values-based messaging models based on a nuanced spectrum of values and attitudes that inform political beliefs

2019 WHAT HAPPENED

Catalist launches the What Happened series to publicly offer a voter-file based view of the electorate

2021 CATALIST UNION

Catalist workers formed a union, affiliated with the Communications Workers of America (Local 2336), making Catalist the only unionized progressive data firm.

Click here to meet our Board of Managers.

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