team
Meet Our Team
Roz Lemieux a Partner at Fission. Prior to co-founding Fission, Roz served as the Executive Director of the New Organizing Institute (NOI) – the premiere training institute for tech-enabled grassroots organizers. NOI grads serve in the White House, are New Media Directors of several federal agencies, lead the digital teams at a number of major national nonprofits, and played a major role in Obama’s 2008 victory. Roz was a core member of the MoveOn.org team through the 2004 and 2006 election cycles – serving as a coordinator between their organizing and technical teams. Prior to joining MoveOn, she operated an independent consulting business, conducting online campaigns for progressive candidates and causes. She got her start in online advocacy in 1999, serving as the Feminist Majority Foundation's web team director. Roz has spoken at dozens of conferences about the power of technology and social media for empowering individuals and groups to make positive change in the world. She has won several awards for her work, including the 2009 Women’s Information Network “Young Women of Achievement” award and recognition from Planned Parenthood for the Feminist Majority’s trailblazing online campaign in support of women and girls in Afghanistan (2003). Roz brings a background in PHP/MySQL, .NET/MSSQL, Ruby on Rails, and HTML/CSS/JS, as well as 10 years of technology training experience to bear in her role at this technology-focused firm.
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Jake is a strategist and campaign architect who works with political groups, businesses and nonprofits to translate big ideas and good intentions into effective, responsible reality.
Prior to his role as Chief Strategy Officer at Fission Strategy, Jake served as the Engagement Director of the Sunlight Foundation, leading Sunlight's acclaimed communications, multimedia production and grassroots organizing teams. Before Sunlight, Jake was the strategic communications director for the Energy Action Coalition, which brought over 12,000 people to Capitol Hill to lobby for clean energy reform at Power Shift '09, and mobilized 350,000 'climate voters' in 10 weeks in the 2008 elections.
In his otherwise diverse career - from the innards of Washington, DC to the Persian Gulf and East Africa - Jake has run large international conferences, lead national nonprofit organizations, designed partnerships between companies and nonprofits, built websites, created distributed events and crowd-sourced design projects, and shared untold stories through video, visualizations and photography.
Outside the office, Jake is a former All-American triathlete, a published photographer and writer, and serves in a variety of advisory, committee and board roles. Through it all, Jake hopes to one day return to his first job as minor league baseball mascot Murray the Mule.
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Cindy is Fission's Technical Director. Prior to joining Fission, Cindy was a Principal and co-founder of Riverscape - a software consulting firm which since 1999 has been responsible for the development of leading-edge web, medical imaging, and speech synthesis software. She is expert in LAMP, PHP, C++, Java, AJAX, Javascript, HTML, and CSS. Prior to Riverscape, she was the Lead Engineer of the Operating System group at Thinking Machines, where she was responsible for the development of the operating system for the CM-5, a landmark massively parallel supercomputer. She was also the co-founder and CTO of Islandway, a startup software development company in the project management and collaboration market. In her spare time, CIndy likes to play with new technology, spend time with her family, and enjoy nature (hike, camp, bike, rollerblade, etc).
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Todd is Fission's Lead Developer. In addition to his work with Fission Strategy, Todd Kamin is the founder and President of Argot Inc., a web software consulting company. Argot's clients have included The Alliance for Climate Protection, SpeedDate, Wasserman Media Group, and others. Before branching out on his own, Todd served as a senior engineer at ZeroDegrees.com and a developer at Ask.com. He is proficient in HTML, PHP, C++, Java, and Perl and has experience with MySQL, Postgres, and Berkeley DB, and server administration. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in Computer Engineering. In his spare time, Todd enjoys trail running and playing golf and ice hockey.
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Though she graduated from the University of Illinois with a Bachelor of Music and has performed professionally in numerous musical theatre productions, Lizzie has also spent her years since college as a Department and/ or Store Manager for such retailers as Saks Fifth Avenue and Ann Taylor. In this capacity she was able to develop a strong relationship with the Operations, Human Resources and Event Planning departments, often managing up to 50 employees at a time and taking each one of them personally through the onboarding experience.
While she spends a lot of her time organizing and facilitating for the Fission Team, Lizzie has also been known to enjoy karaoke, life on a tropical island, and cooking elaborate meals for Kyle and the dog.
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Ayan Ahmed is the Spring 2012 Intern at Fission Strategy. She is a graduate of The George Washington University where she received a B.A. in International Affairs with concentrations in International Development Studies and Africa. Ayan is interested in all matters of social justice, politics, and economic development. When she's not working at Fission, she is a call-specialist at an anti-human trafficking organization based out of Washington, DC. Ayan's long-term goals include pursuing a career path combining her interests in international development and social media.
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John Brian McCarthy, a Senior Project Manager with Fission Strategy, works with non-profits to bring even the most complex website design and development projects to fruition. He’s led marketing and development projects for the ONE Campaign, Heifer International, the National Parks Conservation Association, Feeding America, Conservation International, and dozens of other major organizations. A native of Wisconsin, John Brian served as Online Director for Senator Russ Feingold’s campaign and PAC before moving to the DC area to be a Client Manager at Beaconfire Consulting. As Online Marketing Director at the Reform Immigration FOR America campaign, John Brian worked with Fission to generate over a million calls and faxes to Congress in just 12 months, and built the nation’s largest cell phone advocacy network to date. He holds two BFAs from Viterbo University. He spends his free time enjoying the outdoors, taking photos, and traveling, preferably all at once.
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Adriana Dakin is an online engagement consultant at Fission Strategy. With facility in both the creative and technical sides of communications, she has in-depth project management and online campaign experience from conception to implementation. Her passion for supporting and propelling women into leadership roles has led her to serve on the Board and Advisory Board of Young Women Social Entrepreneurs-San Francisco since 2005, and she is the part-time Director of Online Engagement for the national organization. For A Successful Women, she wrote What's Your Passion? Turn It Into a Career. During her graduate studies, Adriana mediated in small claims courts with the Harvard Mediation Program and served as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Kennedy School Review. She’s a board member and technology officer with the Women in Business Network in her home town, a frequenter of the annual Bioneers conference, and a member of the Fearless Women Entrepreneur Network. She received her B.A. from Wesleyan University, earning honors in History and Phi Beta Kappa, and balanced her academic study with equal doses of pottery making. She earned a Master in Public Policy degree from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in negotiation, leadership, and international security policy. Besides pottery, Adriana loves being outdoors and playing with horses.
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Pierre is a Junior Associate at Fission Strategy. He graduated from UW Madison with a B.A in Business with concentrations in Entrepreneurship and International business. Outside of school, Pierre was involved with Doctor of the World and Madison Cooperative Community. Through those experiences, he has developed a special interest in immigration issues and affordable housing. Pierre has also shown an interest in social media campaigns and other online marketing tools. In his free time, Pierre enjoys speaking Spanish, learning about website design, and playing bikepolo.
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Beka Economopoulos is a Senior Strategist at Fission Strategy. She has 15 years experience as a grassroots field and online organizer, working with local, national, and international NGOs, community groups, and activist mobilizations. Prior to joining Fission, Beka created and ran the Online Organizing department at Greenpeace USA, managing a team with a focus on online/offline integration, volunteer management, leadership development, and online social networking and social media strategy. Before that, she was the web producer at United for Peace and Justice. Beka is a senior trainer and Advisory Board member at the New Organizing Institute, the only formal training institution for online organizing in the U.S. She has been a presenter and trainer on digital activism, online organizing, and creative communications at the Social Tech Training in Toronto, Craigs List Boot Camp, Netroots Nation, Non-Profit Technology Network (NTEN), Direct Marketing Fundraisers Association, Personal Democracy Forum, Left Forum, Grassroots Media Conference, Green Corps, New Museum, Pratt Institute, Columbia University, New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, Parsons New School for Design, and Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology. Beka is also the co-founder and director of Not An Alternative, a volunteer-run non-profit organization based in Brooklyn, New York, whose mission aims to integrate art, activism, technology and theory in order to affect popular understandings of events, symbols and history. She has produced videos and creative interventions for campaigns and clients in this capacity, including Greenpeace USA, Oxfam International, New Immigrant Community Empowerment, and performance artist Reverend Billy. Beka serves on the Steering Committee of Where We Are Now, a network of roughly 100 New York based arts, cultural and academic institutions coordinating efforts around politics and activism. She has been interviewed and quoted on CNN, BBC, Fox, NBC, ABC, NPR, NY Times, Washington Post and many other media outlets.
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Austen Levihn-Coon specializes in helping non-profits leverage emerging innovations in communications technology, social media, multimedia and mobile to win advocacy campaigns. He has a background in grassroots campaigning and social movement theory, both of which contribute to his current work at Fission Strategy overseeing the strategic design, development, and implementation of online campaigns, social media apps, websites, and infographics. Austen has prior experience as a field organizer with the Obama for America 2008 presidential campaign and as a community organizer with Texas Campaign for the Environment. In addition, He oversaw the social media campaign for Power Shift 2009, a national youth climate change conference, which brought more than 12,000 students to Washington, DC and launched a new generation of grassroots climate change organizers. Prior to joining Fission Strategy, Austen worked as a consultant on new media campaigns with non-profits and political campaigns at Joe Trippi & Associates. Austen has a background in social movement theory through his primary research on the early geographic and demographic trends of the climate change movement in the United States.
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Sam Marx is a New Media Associate at Fission Strategy. He has a Master's degree in International Economic Relations from American University's School of International Service in Washington, D.C., and completed his Bachelor's degree in Economics and Scandinavian from the University of Oregon. Sam's professional interests include promoting progressive economic policies, job creation, and social justice, and he uses his writing and analytical skills to help Fission develop comprehensive outreach programs, evaluate social media landscapes, and provide in-depth strategy recommendations. When not working or discussing international economic affairs, Sam likes to play guitar, listen to heavy metal, watch science fiction shows and films, and read comics.
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Jess is Fission's Design Partner. Prior to joining Fission, Jess served as Design Manager for the Obama for America 2008 presidential campaign during which she oversaw the visual design and development of all web and print materials for the campaign. This included the official campaign website and microsites, web/email-based fundraising campaign graphics, state and constituency literature, large-scale signage and event materials, and special projects. Before working on Obama '08, Jess was the Lead Designer for Blue State Digital and provided visual design and usability expertise for various clients. Jess has also pioneered ground-breaking design at Big Communications, the National Gallery of Art, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Office of the Clerk in the U.S. House of Representatives. Jess has ten years experience as a graphic designer for both web and print. She's proficient in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, and other design programs. She also has expert knowledge of XHTML and CSS plus experience with back-end programming languages such as PHP and ColdFusion to create database-driven websites and applications. When not designing and developing, Jess enjoys biking, traveling, and spending time with her husband, Jon and puppy, Ozzie.
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Kelly has been a consultant with Fission Strategy since 2009 working on social media outcomes and promotion. She has over nine years experience as a grassroots field and online organizer leading campaigns for national and state based non-profit organizations including the National Wildlife Federation, Population Connection, the Izaak Walton League of America and Planned Parenthood of Georgia. Kelly co-founded the membership organization Hello Craft and currently serves as the Program Director where she organizes the programing for their annual business conference. Kelly also served as the previous Chair of the Executive Board of DC EcoWomen, where she lead the membership organization to foster networking and career building within the environmental and conservation field. Kelly is a graduate of the MidWest Academy as well as the Environmental Leadership Institute. She holds a BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design.
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Jason has over 14 years of web and software development experience with notable positions including lead software developer, lead web developer, senior web developer, project manager and vice president of technology. He has worked for a plethora of non-profit / b-corp organizations, banks, Fortune 100 companies, casinos, digital agencies, professional sports teams, venture capital / angel supported start-ups , as well as multiple universities and colleges. Jason specializes in building community driven platforms, donation platforms, crowdsourced platforms and content management systems (CMS) using the LAMP technology stack. In his spare time he enjoys spending time with his family and teaching web development programming at his local university.
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