Sarah Flowers is one of America’s foremost progressive media consultants, particularly when it comes to winning ballot initiatives, and reaching the conflicted and difficult-to-motivate voters who are necessary for a winning campaign.
A second-generation Mexican-American native of Oklahoma, Sarah brings hard-won personal experience to winning in red states and winning over voters of all types, which showed in wins like 76 Words’ victory over an anti-abortion measure in Mississippi, for which the American Association of Political Consultants named her the year’s Most Valuable Player. That Mississippi win is one of her many successful projects on reproductive health - from winning a dozen ballot initiatives on the issue, to helping direct Planned Parenthood national independent expenditures which the Sunlight Foundation called the year’s most successful, to co-leading major research campaigns for NARAL Pro-Choice America and reproductive justice groups. Additionally, Sarah produced an awardwinning documentary looking at how Black women in America receive reproductive health care. Helping people tell their personal stories for social good is Sarah’s passion.
She has been 76 Words’ co-lead on some of our most historic successful ballot measures – winning the freedom to marry for all, raising the minimum wage, allowing death with dignity, and expanding voting rights.
Helping women win elected office is Sarah’s other passion. Among dozens of candidate wins some highlights include: the red-to-blue Congressional win of Florida’s first Latina Democrat, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in South Florida; electing Texas’ first two Latina Congresswomen, in Veronica Escobar and Sylvia Garcia; electing Georgia’s Congresswoman Nikema Williams, helping make Tishaura Jones St. Louis’ first Black woman Mayor, and Vi Lyles Charlotte’s first Black woman mayor. As the former co-chair of American University’s WeLEAD program, she’s helped train a generation of women campaign operatives, and has helped develop some of the now-standard academic thinking on how to win ballot initiatives.
Sarah resides in Washington DC with her internet-popular dog, Bear. She is a member of the LGBT community.
Matt Erickson is one of 76 Words’ founding partners, and has served as the firm’s strategic and creative director on some of its biggest campaigns.
He was one of the key strategists on the firm’s dual victories on marriage equality and voter ID in Minnesota in 2012, and was the paid media lead on the successful campaign to restore voting rights to the formerly incarcerated in Florida in 2018. He’s helped win ballot measures on issues from payday lending in Colorado to expanding voting rights in Michigan.
He has been integrally involved in Planned Parenthood’s political work for more than twenty years, helping direct their Presidential independent expenditures from 2000 (which was the year’s largest) to 2012 (which was the year’s most successful). He also helped direct NARAL Pro-Choice America’s 2020 independent expenditure campaign that went undefeated and was integral to Democrats taking the U.S. Senate that year. He helped design and run The Nature Conservancy’s ballot initia ning that has empowered more than a hundred land conservation activists to go win ballot campaigns in their local communities.
He has additional won candidate and independent expenditure campaigns across the country, including flipping the Minnesota House twice to a DFL majority and retaining that DFL majority four times. For that most recent majority hold, 2022, he produced more than three dozen ads outlining the threat Republican candidates posed to reproductive freedom in Minnesota.
His ads for groups from the League of Conservation Voters, to United States Senate Jon Tester, to Minnesota’s marriage equality ballot initiative, have earned “Pollie” awards from the can Association of Political Consultants.
Mũthoni Wambu Kraal is a veteran political strategist, organizer, and trainer. She has served as a senior level advisor and trainer to seasoned and aspiring political leaders and parties, both in the U.S. and internationally. She is known for her diplomacy but also for speaking truth to politics. Mũthoni has worked in progressive politics for over two decades and she’s played a pivotal role in historic campaigns. She most recently served as the National Political & Organizing Director for the Democratic National Committee, helping Democrats to win the White House in 2020 and critical races across the country with a record-breaking voter coalition.
Prior, she spent almost a decade at EMILY's List, the largest political resource for women in the U.S., shaping women leaders at every level of the ballot. Mũthoni got her start in campaigns working 2 election cycles at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee raising money for U.S. House candidates and Congressional incumbents in tough races. That’s when she saw up close that some of the most underrepresented groups in Congress weren’t keeping up with the growing budgets of campaigns.
This led Mũthoni to co-open and run a woman-owned fundraising firm servicing diverse clients, including Barack Obama’s winning U.S. Senate race. She’s worked for the labor movement and held senior level campaign roles. Mũthoni grew up in New York City. She’s a graduate of Howard University with a B.A. in journalism. Mũthoni is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated; a lifetime member of the American Council of Young Political Leaders; an active member of Global Progress and sits on the Board of Act Blue. She resides in Washington, DC with her husband John Peter, their young son Mirii.
Jessica Byrd is a nationally recognized political strategist who has spent the last decade intentionally focused on strengthening Black political power and securing the promise of a multiracial Democracy. In 2015 she founded Three Point Strategies, to elect Black women and serve Black Movement. From 2016 - 2020 she founded and led the Electoral Justice Project - weaving a national electoral strategy in partnership with over 100 Black local organizations through the Movement for Black Lives. In 2020, Jessica produced the She the People Presidential Town Hall and the Black National Convention, historic events centering the lives and policies of women of color and Black voters.
In 2018 and 2022, she served as the Deputy Campaign Manager for the Abrams for Governor campaign in Georgia in 2018 and 2022. Together, they were able to shift the landscape of Georgia politics, by securing the 2018 Democratic nomination for Governor--a first for Black Women in America.
Jessica lives with her partner in West Philadelphia and proudly hails from Columbus Ohio where her family still resides. Known for her hopeful leadership and people-powered values, Jessica believes that we will win.