PAC+ Team
Steve Phillips
Steve Philips is a San Francisco-based donor activist. Steve works on both the state and national level in progressive donor organizing and infrastructure-building, after a 25-year career as an education reformer, attorney and elected official. In 1992, Steve became the youngest person ever elected to public office in San Francisco when he won a seat on the Board of Education, where he served for eight years. He is the Founder and Chairman of PowerPAC.org, a national advocacy organization that conducted the country’s largest independent expenditure effort in support of Barack Obama during the 2008 Presidential primaries. Steve is also a founding member of the Progressive Era Project, a statewide donor collaborative working to build progressive political infrastructure in California; board member of Progressive Majority, electing progressive champions to office throughout the country; and board member of the Democracy Alliance, a national collaborative of the country’s largest progressive donors working to fund progressive infrastructure nationally,
Julie Martinez Ortega
Julie Martínez Ortega, J.D., Ph.D. is a quantitative researcher and an attorney with over twenty years of experience working on electoral, health, immigration, employment, and labor issues impacting Latinos, low-income families, youth, and minority communities. She is the Principal Investigator and a partner with Project New America Latino, a national political polling, survey and strategy firm that helps clients understand and engage Latino populations. At the Cost, Finance, & Access division within Health and Human Services, she worked alongside other social scientists designing and analyzing the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), the nation’s most complete source of data on the cost and use of health care and insurance. As Research Director at American Rights at Work she established the policy analysis team for the nation’s leading organized labor and workers’ rights advocacy and research organization, and shaped its findings into effective materials for legislative and organizing campaigns. Dr. Martinez Ortega has taught graduate and undergraduate courses on Health Policy, Race and the Law, Wealth and Social Inequality, and Legal Studies. She has served as a consultant on the Latino and African American electorates for political and issues campaigns, including the Obama primary. As VP for Policy & Advocacy at PowerPAC.org, Dr. Martínez Ortega collaborates with progressive leaders to develop and implement research and advocacy projects that energize, expand, and empower the electorate, and ensure that America’s growing diversity is reflected in policy outcomes. She was born and raised in a large Mexican American family with deep roots in South Texas, and is a graduate of Stanford University, the UCLA School of Law, and Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management. She is a member of the California Bar.
Kirk Clay
Kirk Clay has returned to PowerPAC as the Senior Advisor. PowerPAC is an organization focused on politics and civic engagement. He worked for PowerPAC as the national field director during the 2008 primary season where he led a $10 million effort that mobilized more than 500,000 voters in ten states. Between 2008 and 2011, Mr. Clay was the National Civic Engagement Director for the NAACP where he was responsible for developing and implementing political research, advocacy and training agenda. Under his leadership, the NAACP executed three 2.0 style voter mobilization campaigns and a national census effort to increase civic participation rates in 2008, 2009, and 2010.
Edil De Los Reyes
Edil De Los Reyes is the Deputy Political Director for PowerPAC. A self-described data-geek, Edil works with PowerPAC’s Dr. Julie Martinez Ortega crunching and analyzing numbers about electoral patterns and trends and their interrelationship with country’s demographic changes. In 2010, Edil served as the New Media Organizer for the One Nation Working Together campaign helping to organize tens of thousands of activists, community members, and unionists to march in DC for jobs, justice, and education. Prior to joining PowerPAC, Edil ran the California Democratic Party campaign operations in San Bernardino County. As one of the country’s fastest growing counties, Edil took on a rapidly growing area that had been overlooked and developed civic engagement training modules, implemented innovated new media strategies, and attracted and deployed a volunteer team of youth. Her work helped turn San Bernardino County “blue” for the first time in modern history. She is a proud alumna of American University, holding a BA from the School of Public Affairs. Also a graduate of American University’s training institutes - Campaign Management Institute and Women and Politics Institute. In her spare time, Edil loves to snowboard, bake copious amounts of cookies, dance and tweet. Follow her on Twitter @mari_delosreyes.
