Leadership
Kristina Wilfore
Executive Director
Kristina is one of the country’s leading experts on state policy and politics – having spent nine years working in over 30 state capitals and on dozens of ballot initiatives across the country. Kristina has been instrumental in helping pass laws to increase the minimum wage in four states since 1998, lower the price of prescription drugs, protect clean election laws, reduce class-sizes, reform unemployment insurance, and create family and medical leave insurance. Before being asked to run BISC and BISC Foundation, Kristina was the Communications Director of the Center for Policy Alternatives where she helped pass progressive economic and social justice policies in dozens of states and led training workshops for over 1000 state legislators and activists each year. Prior to that position, Kristina helped launch the Economic Opportunity Institute (EOI) in Washington State, where she organized research and media strategies for the ballot initiative to increase Washington’s minimum wage. At EOI she assisted in the design of a model welfare-to-work program and established the nation’s first-ever childcare wage and career ladder. Kristina served as Communications Director of the University of Washington Evans School of Public Affairs and as Marketing and Fundraising Associate for the Cascade Center for Public Service, a training institute for elected officials and nonprofit administrators.
She is an advisory member of New York University’s Political Campaign Management program and Democratic GAIN as well as a member of the American Association of Political Consultants. She regularly invited to train activists, facilitate retreats and conferences, and give political briefings to diverse constituencies across the county. Kristina is a recipient of WIN’s 2004 Young Women of Achievement award and Campaigns and Election’s “Rising Stars of 2004.” Kristina holds a Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Washington and Bachelor degrees in Political Science and Broadcast Communication.
Steven Schwartz
Development Director
Steve has led an array of grassroots and grasstops fundraising, event planning, community organizing, and political affairs management efforts, working with a wide variety of national progressive groups and organizations. Steve has trained community activists in the fundamentals of planning and hosting events, and has coached several groups through strategic fundraising processes. Most recently, as Senior Associate at ConklinScott Political Affairs, Steve helped design fundraising strategies for BISC, the League of Rural Voters, Campaign for America’s Future, the Young Democrats of America, and 2020 Democrats. In 2004, Steve served as Deputy Finance Director of the Michigan campaign to defeat Proposal Two, an anti-gay amendment to the state Constitution. He was brought on in the last three months of the campaign, and quickly developed a 1300+-person donor pool to engage investor-voters more fully in the political process.
Organization’s Objective
The political Right has effectively used ballot measures to prevent progressive coalitions from building long-term infrastructure in many states. Cleverly crafted conservative and ultra-libertarian ballot initiative strategies have aimed at keeping our diverse coalition apart by singling out and splitting off critical progressive constituencies - this has happened time and again as we have seen initiative campaigns that target labor unions, the civil rights community, LGBT people, the choice community, environmentalists, and so forth. However, to win as a progressive community, we must stop allowing wedges to be driven between us.
The key to this is robust infrastructure, built of diverse political minds within and across states, and funded by investors who envision and contribute to organizing that results in progressive power for multiple election cycles.
Progressives have tended to use ballot measures as policy tools to enact, defend, or dissolve laws on state and local levels. This leads the community toward an election-to-election mentality that fails to take into account the tremendous political effects that can be accomplished with smart ballot measure campaigns. These effects include opportunities for ballot initiative campaigns to frame election issues, increase progressive turnout, house coordinated field operations, draw contrasts between candidates, build voter lists, and empower progressive organizations.
Moreover, when well-conceived, ballot measure campaigns bring together powerful coalitions that last beyond a single election cycle. The progressive community often finds itself in a defensive posture when considering ballot measure campaigns; the opportunity to getting out of that posture lies within the campaigns themselves. By building stronger progressive infrastructure using initiative campaigns as organizing moments, our state, regional, and national organizations become empowered to seek progressive political gains through proactive campaigns in 2008 and future cycles.
Victory in 2008 and Beyond
