Buffy Wicks

Buffy Wicks in 2009, introducing USAservice.org.

Buffy Jo Christina Wicks (born August 10, 1977) is an American political strategist. She previously served on the senior staff of President Obama's 2008 and 2012 campaigns and as Deputy Director at the White House Office of Public Engagement. As a national expert on grassroots organizing and politics, Wicks is frequently cited as a source for mainstream publications like TIME and the Associated Press.

Background

Born in Foresthill, California in 1977, Wicks graduated from Placer High School in 1995. She graduated from the University of Washington in 1999 with a B.A. degree in political science and history.

In 2000, she began a two-year program for an International Master in Peace, Conflict, and Development Studies (PEACE Master) of the Universitat Jaume I (UJI), Castellón, Spain, under the UNESCO Chair of Philosophy for Peace, but left in 2001 and did not complete the degree.

Career history

As one of the early hires on the 2008 campaign for President Obama, Wicks spearheaded new and innovative strategies for grassroots mobilization and was responsible for a new model of outcome-based organizing famously utilized during the Obama campaign. She was deployed to run state operations during the primaries and general election, including California, Texas and Missouri.

Wicks was then tapped by President Obama to serve in the Executive Office of the President as the Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. In this role, she was President Obama’s liaison for key stakeholders throughout the country and charged with mobilizing their support to pass the president’s legislative priorities such as health care reform and financial regulation.

In 2012, she joined President Obama’s reelection effort and served as the National Director of Operation Vote. She spearheaded the campaign’s cutting edge strategy to communicate with and mobilize core demographic voters, including African Americans, Latinos, young people, and women, producing record turnout among targeted voter segments. She drove strategies across departments—including organizing, digital, earned media, paid media, messaging, political outreach, and analytics—and engaged the campaign’s base to ensure the largest support and turnout from these key constituencies.

From 2014-2015, Wicks transitioned Obama’s SuperPAC Priorities USA into a pro-Hillary Clinton vehicle and served as its Executive Director. Wicks previously worked in the labor movement, fighting for better health care and wages for disenfranchised workers, and on Capitol Hill. She was a Fellow at the Institute of Politics and Public Policy at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress focusing on public policies affecting women and families.

Wicks is the co-host of the Riveters Podcast, a weekly podcast described as an "ode to modern womanhood" which features new guests each week to discuss issues facing women today. Guests have included Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood of America; Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress; Sarah Thomas, the first female NFL referee; and Jay Newton-Small, Washington Correspondent for TIME Magazine and author of Broad Influence: How Women are Change the Way America Works.

Wicks frequently publishes opinion editorials for TIME, Politico, and the Daily Beast on current political events. She also gives regular speeches in the United States and abroad on organizing, leadership, women's issues, and the state of American politics.

See also

• Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2008
• Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2012

External links

• White House Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs
• Buffy Wicks on why Obama will win
• Buffy Wicks