About RTV Staff

Heather Smith is President of Rock the Vote

In 2008, Smith led Rock the Vote to achieve its highest voter registration numbers in the organization’s 20-year history - 2.2 million individuals used Rock the Vote’s tools to register to vote. During the historic election season, Rock the Vote ran the largest non-partisan voter registration campaign in history that saw 22 million young voters cast a ballot. Smith appeared on NBC News, the Today Show, FOX News, CNN, NPR, BBC and other major news outlets in the US and around the world. 
  
Prior to taking over Rock the Vote, Smith founded and directed Young Voter Strategies, a nonpartisan project in partnership with The Graduate School of Political Management at The George Washington University with support from The Pew Charitable Trusts.  Young Voter Strategies provided the public, parties, candidates, consultants and nonprofits with data and research on the youth vote as well as best practices to effectively mobilize young people. In 2006, Smith and Young Voter Strategies coordinated the nation’s largest non-partisan project to register young voters using innovative and replicable methods of voter outreach.  The project registered over 540,000 youth ages 18-30 and played a large role in the young voter turnout increase in 2006. 
  
In 2004 Smith served as national field director for the Student PIRGs New Voters Project, the largest nonpartisan grassroots effort ever undertaken to register and mobilize young voters. Across the country, the New Voters Project, under Smith’s direction, registered nearly 600,000 voters and conducted an intensive, multi-faceted get-out-the-vote effort to bring these newly registered voters to the polls on Election Day. Youth turnout was 11 percentage points higher than in 2000. 
  
Prior to her work at the New Voters Project, Smith was an organizing director for Green Corps’ Field School for Environmental Organizing in Boston. Smith received a B.A. with honors in economics and public policy from Duke University.  In 2006, Smith was named one of Campaign & Elections magazine’s Rising Stars for her work with young voters. She has also been named one of Esquire Magazine’s Best and Brightest of 2007. 

Star sign: Aries
Job title: President
Which means you do what exactly: A little of everything.
Coolest Rock the Vote experience: Election Night 2008.
First concert: Michael Jackson, Thriller tour
First car: Chevy Corsica, electric blue.
Favorite artist: Bob Dylan
Most-favorite city: Los Angeles
Biggest explosion you have ever seen/caused: Rallies, spontaneous dancing, and other expressions of pent of hope and fear and frustration and happiness on Election Night 2008... I was at the White House. 

Thomas Bates
 
Star sign: Taurus
Job Title: Vice President, Civic Engagement
Which means you do what, exactly? Oversee the RTV political program, including the 2009-2010 elections work, our issue advocacy efforts, and the new high school civics program.
Coolest Rock the Vote experience: Talking to Ed Harris at the Inauguration party about his voiceover work with NFL Films and the filming of Appaloosa.
First concert: Foreigner and the Doobie Brothers at the Riverfest Amphitheater, Little Rock, Arkansas, circa 1994.
Favorite artist: Hey Marseilles (www.myspace.com/heymarseilles)
Most-favorite city: Seattle in the summer.
Best 'Twelve Days of Christmas Gift':I actually won a set of Twelve Days of Christmas drinking glasses when I was eight, so I literally have a “Twelve Days of Christmas” gift.  Twelve of them, in fact.   
Most humiliating thing on your iPod: Buddy Jewell – winner of the 2003 Nashville Star competition – song: “Dyess, Arkansas

Chrissy Faessen

Star sign: Leo
Job title: Vice President of Communications and Marketing
Which means you do what exactly: Develop and deploy communications and marketing strategies both online and offline using music, artists, celebrities and new technology to engage young people in issue activism and political engagement.
Coolest Rock the Vote experience: Literally running into Shepard Fairey while “guerilla marketing” in Denver.
First concert: Boys II Men
Favorite vegetable: Broccoli – but it must have cheese on it.
Favorite artist: Madonna – love her!
Favorite region of the world: Tuscany, Italy
Movie person you resemble: It’s not me, but my 100 lb. yellow lab resembles Marley from Marley & Me. 

Kelly Fogel is our Artist/Label Relations manager. Kelly works with artists, record labels, celebrities, and other creative producers to incorporate political participation into their messages. She is based in Los Angeles.

Mary McClelland

Star sign: Scorpio
Job title: Director of Interactive Media
Which means you do what exactly: Figure out how to use all these new-fangled technologies to take over the world.
Coolest Rock the Vote experience: WWE Smackdown!
Most-favorite city: Chicago
Cartoons or reality TV: Reality TV
Biggest explosion you have ever seen/caused: Putting an M80 in a toilet. Who knew?
Celebrity you get compared to? Tiger Woods
If you were a super hero, your power would be: Turning water into beer.
Most humiliating thing on your iPod: Whitney Houston Dance Mix 

dp

Star sign: Scorpio
Job title: Digital Guru (or something like that)
Which means you do what exactly: Design and build web stuff.
Coolest Rock the Vote experience: Registering online voters, of course!  But, going to events, meeting some celebrities, and scoring the occasional Grammy ticket is cool too.
Rumor about yourself you’d most like to see spread: That I’m over 60 years old.
Most-favorite city: Sydney, Australia
Biggest explosion you have ever seen/caused: Burned down a 3-car garage by accident… Sorry, Dad!
Movie character you wish you were: Superman!