How I Helped Power 20+ Campaigns, Triple the Email Program, and Drive Landmark Legislation for Citizen Action of New York
From steering committee work on climate justice, mass incarceration, and democracy, to tripling email output, growing social media by 50%, and creating the digital infrastructure behind some of New York's most significant legislative wins.
Introduction:
Citizen Action of New York is one of the state's most powerful grassroots membership organizations — a coalition fighting on multiple fronts simultaneously for the communities most impacted by systemic inequality. Their Justice Agenda spans seven issue areas: climate justice, ending mass incarceration, education, healthcare, housing, democracy, and economic justice.
During my time with the organization, I wasn't just a digital strategist. I was embedded in the work — sitting on steering committees, shaping campaign strategy, and building the communications infrastructure that carried these fights into the public consciousness and, ultimately, into law.
Background:
Citizen Action of New York had deep roots in grassroots organizing, but faced a growing challenge: the scale and pace of their advocacy work had outgrown their digital communications capacity. They were running multiple campaigns simultaneously across issue areas, chapters, and coalitions — but their digital presence, email program, and content output weren't keeping up.
The organization needed someone who could operate at both levels — strategic enough to sit in the room where policy decisions were being shaped, and tactical enough to turn those moments into content, campaigns, and materials that moved people to action.
The challenge:
The core challenge wasn't a single gap — it was the complexity of running 20+ campaigns across seven issue areas, multiple chapters, and statewide coalitions, all at the same time. The digital communications program needed to:
Scale email output dramatically to match the pace and volume of the organization's campaigns
Grow social media presence across Facebook, Twitter/X, and Instagram to expand reach and public visibility
Produce digital assets and materials for 20+ campaigns without sacrificing quality or consistency
Support chapters across New York with their individual digital needs
Build coalition toolkits that partner organizations could use to amplify shared campaigns
Contribute strategically to the steering committee's work on climate, mass incarceration, and democracy
Strategy and Implementation
Steering committee & legislative campaign work: In the room where the fights were happening
I sat on the steering committee for three of Citizen Action's seven Justice Agenda issue areas — climate justice, ending mass incarceration, and democracy — contributing to both the strategic direction of campaigns and the communications approach that brought them to life publicly.
Email program: From limited output to 5x a week — tripling performance across the board
When I joined, the email program was significantly underperforming relative to the scale of the organization's work. I overhauled the strategy end to end — building out segmentation, increasing send frequency to 5 emails per week across segments, and developing content that drove both engagement and action.
The result was a tripling of the email program's performance and output — more emails reaching more people, more often, with higher open rates and stronger calls to action that converted readers into advocates, donors, and participants.
Partnership development & influencer engagement: 200+ content partnerships built from the ground up
One of the highest-leverage moves in modern political campaigns is getting your message into communities through voices those communities already trust. I identified, pitched, and built relationships with 200+ creators, influencers, and publisher partners, in English and Spanish, whose audiences aligned with the campaign's target demographics — collaborating on content that felt authentic, not transactional.
Each partnership was managed end-to-end: outreach, briefing, content review, and integration with campaign messaging. The result was a distribution network that extended the campaign's reach far beyond its own follower base.
Social media growth: 50% growth across Facebook, Twitter/X, and Instagram
I built and executed an in-depth social media strategy across all three of Citizen Action's primary platforms — developing content that translated complex policy fights into accessible, shareable moments. Strategic hashtags, influencer collaborations, and a consistent two-way engagement approach helped build a genuinely active online community around the organization's campaigns.
Social media followers and engagement grew by 50% — expanding the organization's reach and amplifying their advocacy into audiences that traditional organizing couldn't always access.
Digital assets & campaign materials: 20+ campaigns. One consistent, powerful voice.
Across all issue areas and campaigns, I produced the full range of digital assets the organization needed to show up — social graphics, email content, coalition toolkits, marketing materials, one-pagers, and more. For campaigns like No More Cause Evictions and End Medical Debt, I created materials that partner organizations and chapters could immediately activate, extending the campaign's reach far beyond Citizen Action's own channels.
Managing this volume — across 20+ active campaigns simultaneously — required building systems, not just producing content. Every asset was built to be scalable, replicable, and usable by the chapters and coalition partners who needed it.
Chapter support & team leadership: Building capacity across the organization
Beyond statewide campaigns, I provided direct digital support to Citizen Action's chapters across New York — helping each chapter show up consistently in their local communities while staying aligned with the broader organizational voice. I also managed and supervised junior and entry-level staff, building internal capacity and ensuring the communications team could sustain its output over time.
Website revamp: A digital home that matched the scale of the mission
I led a full redesign of Citizen Action's website — transforming it into a user-friendly, visually compelling hub with clear calls to action, improved navigation, and content that communicated the organization's campaigns and impact effectively. Website traffic surged by 35% within six months of the redesign.
Results & Impact
3x
email program performance and output — 5x per week across segments
20%
increase in email open rates across segments
50%
growth in social media followers and engagement
20+
campaigns supported across 7 issue areas simultaneously
35%
email program performance and output — 5x per week across segments
3
steering committees — climate, mass incarceration, democracy
“Digital communications didn’t just support these campaigns — it was the infrastructure that carried them from organizing rooms into public consciousness and, ultimately, into law”
Conclusion
Citizen Action of New York is proof that grassroots organizing and sophisticated digital strategy aren't in tension — they're most powerful when they work together. The fights the organization was leading — for climate justice, criminal justice reform, economic equity, housing, and healthcare — were fights that deserved to be heard by everyone.
My role was to make sure they were. From the steering committee table to the content calendar, from the email program to the coalition toolkit, every piece of work was built to move people — and to ensure that when the moment came to push for real policy change, the organization had the digital infrastructure, the audience, and the momentum to make it happen.
The CLCPA passed. No bail reform advanced. Tax the Rich became a rallying cry that reached millions. That's what digital communications looks like when it's built for movements, not just metrics.