Note From the ED
Hey all,
The world is evolving fast. Since January 2025, we've been staring down the abyss of all-out authoritarianism … and at the same time, we’ve seen so many reasons to be hopeful: Huge uprisings of peaceful resistance, Democratic overperformance across the board, and — if we play our cards right — a rare window of opportunity for real political renewal in these next five years.
MVP and our partners and communities are navigating circumstances that are complex, fast-changing, and genuinely hard. To meet this moment, our strategy and structure need to evolve with it. We need to organize bigger. We need to organize smarter. We need to organize ourselves at MVP to be one of the most effective organizations our movement has ever seen.
We need to organize ourselves at MVP to be one of the most effective organizations our movement has ever seen.
With all this in mind, I’m excited to share some MVP staffing updates that are setting us up for our strongest era yet.
Some of these changes have happened quietly over the past year, while others are recent or coming soon. Read on for the updates — who’s moved, who's moving, and what it means for our work.
This memo isn't exhaustive, but it includes some key highlights I think you’ll love. I know some of our readers like a quick summary, while others really want the deeper dive, so I’m including the short and long versions. (Something for everyone!)
Let’s go win!
Billy Wimsatt
Executive Director, Movement Voter Project
p.s. - Thanks to our comms director Zo Tobi for co-writing this update, and to many of our colleagues for useful edits.
Executive Summary
- Chief Operating Officer: In May 2025, our longtime consultant and seasoned operations leader, Heather Reddick, officially became COO, bringing integration across all core areas of operations, including finance, legal compliance, risk management, and HR/people ops.
- National Partnerships Team: In November 2025, we brought on Kristee Paschall, National Director of Civic Engagement, and Alicia Jay, National Director of Partnerships, to join our Strategic Media Advisor, Rynn Reed, to level up our strategy and funding for national work.
- Chief Program Officer (starting Jan. 2027): Our current Chief Development Officer, Hallie Montoya Tansey, will step into a new CPO role to bring together our national, state, and capacity-building work and carry out the most ambitious programs we’ve ever tried.
- Chief Development Officer (starting Jan. 2027): Sloan Leo Cowan, our Senior Advisor for Philanthropic Strategy, is becoming CDO, bringing years of fundraising and leadership experience, including organizing the largest stakeholders of a $500M organization.
- Strengthening Our Strategy: After consulting with us in 2025, Hayden J. Emmet officially joined our staff in May 2026 as Senior Advisor, focusing on organizational development and program strategy, bringing with him over 20 years of experience in movement building.
- Evolution of the Capacity Building Team: Our Capacity Building Team (led by JPP, Senior Director of Capacity Building) has joined our National Partnerships Team to make sure our capacity-building work makes the most impact across our national and state programs.
- Director of Foundation Relations: In June 2025, Beth Huang joined MVP as our Director of Foundations, leading our work to expand the philanthropic “funding pie” for long-term organizing and movement building.
- Interim Director of State Programs: After 4+ impactful years strengthening our work, our Co-Directors of State Programs, Sarah Chaisson-Warner and Javier Morillo, have decided to depart MVP. Stepping up in the interim to lead our state programs is Val Benavidez, who previously served on our Foundations team and spent the prior 18 years growing and then leading one of our grantee partner organizations, Texas Freedom Network.
The Long Version
Chief Operating Officer: Heather Reddick
In May 2025, our longtime consultant and seasoned operations leader, Heather Reddick, officially became Chief Operating Officer (COO), spearheading greater integration across all core areas of operations, including finance, legal compliance, risk management, and HR/people ops.
→ From her bio: Before joining MVP, she spent more than 12 years at Avaaz, where she helped grow the organization from a small team into a 150-person global advocacy organization working across more than 20 countries. Earlier in her career, she held operations leadership roles at The League of Young Voters and Students for a Free Tibet. Heather is trusted as an exacting operations leader who brings order to complexity without losing sight of people, values, or mission.
She runs a tight ship, and our auditors agree! Thanks to Heather (and our great Operations Team), MVP has never had stronger finance, compliance, and operations systems. Given the political landscape and the complexity of our work, this has never been more critical. Heather will make sure we're internally strong, ready for anything, and built to last no matter what comes our way.
National Partnerships Team: Leveling Up Our National Work
2024 made it clear that local organizing is necessary but not enough on its own to beat back MAGA authoritarianism and put us on track for a better future — see MVP’s 7 Big Questions and Comeback Plan memos from 2025. No matter how great our work is in any individual state or region, we cannot win unless we solve the national-level problems that impact all of us.
We began tackling some of this when we hired Rynn Reed, our Strategic Media Advisor, in early 2025, because winning the media war is essential to the work ahead. Rynn is already blowing all our minds as she pilots a digital media strategy to complement our organizing investments. I learned more from her than from anyone else last year.
→ From her bio: With over twelve years of organizing across institutions like the Working Families Party and Run for Something, plus freelance consulting on technical program design, she has spent several years building infrastructure for a new kind of progressive power: one rooted in media-led organizing and digital trust.
Looking at the national landscape, we saw that a series of interventions were urgently needed, from shifting worldviews en masse to reshaping the Democratic Party, testing and advancing innovations in field organizing, and de-siloing the work of great organizations and movements.
It became clear to us that with some investment and support, we could start to align the national ecosystem more effectively, kickstart key interventions, and build the progressive supermovement needed in this moment. So in November 2025, we hired two new dedicated staff to drive this work:
Kristee Paschall, National Director of Civic Engagement, leads our work to build and strengthen relationships and collaboration with our national partners, focusing on voter engagement, persuasion, and turnout. She’s a powerhouse and also super savvy about civic tech tools (she helped start the first texting and AI programs in the progressive voter space).
→ From her bio: Before MVP, Kristee was the Co-Director of Electoral Powerbuilding at Community Change Action. As the National Director of Win Justice, Kristee led the effort to mobilize 2.5 million people of color and union supporters in FL, MI, and NV. At Wellstone Action (now re:power), she coached people and progressive organizations to build power. She served as Political Director for Faith in Action, launching their data and integrated voter engagement programs and research to optimize voter and relational organizing strategies.
Alicia Jay, National Director of Partnerships, leads our work with national, multi-state, and other partners across organizing, policy, philanthropy, and movement spaces. She has already made a huge impact in leveling up our rapid-response funding to counter authoritarian attacks.
→ From her bio: Before MVP, Alicia co-founded All Due Respect, a national project working to improve sectoral labor standards for community organizers. She previously co-founded and led Make It Work, a national campaign advancing economic security issues for women and families. Alicia has helped mobilize millions of women through intersectional campaigns and events like the We Won't Wait coalition, the United State of Women Summit, and the Survivors’ Agenda.
Is MVP abandoning local organizing? No! National interventions, if successful, will make our state and local organizing stronger and change the landscape for organizers in blue, purple, and red states alike. This is about making all of our work more successful. As a general rule of thumb, we plan to allocate at least 75% to local and state grantmaking and up to 25% to national initiatives.
Incoming Chief Program Officer: Hallie Montoya Tansey
For most of MVP’s existence, I (this is still Billy talking) have served as the “Acting CPO” (Chief Program Officer) in addition to my role as Executive Director — relying heavily on our State Programs and Capacity Building staff for day-to-day leadership and actually driving the work, but ultimately still staying pretty involved and steering a lot of our strategy at a high level. (As everyone on our team knows, I'm passionate and maybe a bit obsessive about our programs.)
Frankly, I've been skeptical I could find someone willing to dive into the deep end of the big, multi-faceted vision we're building — someone who could both A) work with me (no small order!) and B) manage a big, audacious team with many moving parts in a coherent and harmonious way.
As our program work has expanded into more verticals — State Programs, Capacity Building, National Partnerships, and a more robust Program Operations side than ever — it's become increasingly clear that we needed a different leadership structure to move the work.
And honestly, there's someone who'd be better than me at the job. (Not an easy thing to say out loud; any org founders out there can probably relate!) Someone who comes from our State Programs team, has run our Development division, and is always thinking about how all the pieces fit together across the organization. So I asked Hallie Montoya Tansey to take the role of CPO (a lateral move from her current role as Chief Development Officer), and she said yes.
There are a lot of complimentary things I could say about Hallie and her leadership, but I’ll just say this: in my 25+ year career, and of all the amazing leaders I have known, Hallie is the best person I could imagine for this role.
→ From her bio: Before her current role as CDO, Hallie was MVP’s Senior State Strategy Advisor and led our grantmaking in the Western US. Before joining MVP, she served as a research and strategy consultant to non-profits and philanthropy, founded a company, The Target Labs, that provided data analytics to Democratic and progressive campaigns, served as the Obama Administration’s Deputy White House Liaison at the U.S. Department of Education, and led organizing efforts in five states for the 2008 Obama campaign.
Hallie will officially become our Chief Program Officer in January 2027, although she will begin transitioning into this role gradually in fall 2026.
Incoming Chief Development Officer: Sloan Leo Cowan
As Hallie Montoya Tansey prepares to leave our Development division, we are simultaneously preparing to bring on a new Chief Development Officer (CDO): Sloan Leo Cowan.
I can’t even explain how brilliant and wonderful Sloan Leo is. You kind of have to meet them. They were Chief of Staff at the Environmental Defense Fund, a 700-person $500 million organization, and also previously worked with MVP as an organizational development consultant. They really understand strategy and scale.
They joined us in January 2026 to help build our mega donor program and will become our Chief Development Officer in January 2027, beginning a transition this fall to take over for Hallie.
→ From their bio: A community builder and facilitator at heart, they bring more than 15 years of experience in philanthropic advising and organizational strategy. They have served in senior leadership roles, including Chief Relationship Officer at Dream Corps, Chief of Staff at The Trust for Public Land, and Director of Global Board Relations at the Environmental Defense Fund.
Previously, they founded FLOX Studio, a strategy and facilitation practice that worked with foundations, donor networks, and nonprofit leaders to navigate transitions. Clients included philanthropic organizations such as The New York Women's Foundation, The Ms. Foundation, The Chanel Foundation, The Global Fund for Women, and the Groundswell Fund, as well as social justice organizations including The Opportunity Agenda, The New York Immigration Coalition, and Swipe Out Hunger.
They are an enormous, multifaceted talent — a visionary, who is also good with systems, loves and understands people, and is one of the best overall team builders I have ever witnessed. We need this kind of person in the CDO role — someone who also deeply loves MVP and understands both the work and what it looks like to scale. That's what we're getting in Sloan Leo.
Strengthening Our Strategy: Hayden J. Emmet
2024 was a wake-up call, but organizers have been sounding the alarm for years: the local organizing “ground game” needs to grow a lot bigger and a lot better (more on that here and here).
In 2025, we heeded this warning call and doubled down on working with our grantee partners to build on their strengths, identify gaps, and scale up their work.
To consult our team, we brought on Doran Schrantz (longtime leader of MVP partner Faith In Minnesota and key architect of Minnesota’s long journey of political transformation — learn more here) and Doran’s close collaborator, Hayden Emmet, a seasoned movement leader, incredible organizing coach, and organizational development guru who specializes in building aligned, high-performing teams.
In May 2026, Hayden officially joined our staff as Senior Advisor, focusing on organizational development as well as our national and state strategy.
Having him on full-time is already making a huge difference in helping the State Program team — and our whole team — to level up.
→ From his bio: Hayden brings over 25 years of experience at the intersection of movement strategy, politics, and organizational change. Before joining MVP, he was Deputy Chief of Staff at the Working Families Party (WFP), where he supported Maurice Mitchell, WFP National Director, in revamping WFP's organizing strategy. Earlier, he spent over a decade at SEIU, ultimately as Deputy National Political Director, where he developed the union’s Capacity Building program and helped build and run the largest PAC in the country.
Evolution of the Capacity Building Team
Our Capacity Building Team has always been part of our “secret sauce” at MVP: We don’t just give our partners the funding they need to keep the lights on and run payroll; we also help them get the tools, skills, and support they need to do their best work.
Our partners need to get sharper at the things that actually determine whether we win power and then get to wield it over the long term — better data, better comms, better organizing, better strategy. That's what our Capacity Building Team offers, and in the past year, their work has only become more sophisticated, more multi-faceted, and more needed.
To make sure their work creates the most impact across our national and state programs, our Capacity Building Team has joined our National Partnerships Team. Leading our capacity-building efforts is JPP, longtime MVP staffer and now Senior Director of Capacity Building.
→ From their bio: JPP brings over 18 years of experience as an organizer and movement builder, with deep expertise in educating and mobilizing communities around issues of gender, sexuality, class, reproductive justice, prison justice, racial justice, and disability justice.
Before joining MVP, JPP served as Director of Economic Justice Initiatives at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center in New York City. They also held leadership roles at the Sylvia Rivera Project, including Director of Outreach & Community Engagement and Co-director of the Movement Building Team from 2014 to 2018, while serving as a collective member through 2019.
Director of Foundation Relations: Beth Huang
In June 2025, Beth Huang joined MVP as our Director of Foundations to lead our work to “expand the philanthropic funding pie” for long-term organizing and movement building.
“Expanding the pie” for the work of our partners is one of the most important and urgent parts of our mission. (From MVP’s 2026 Bat Signal memo: “We don’t need to match [Republicans] dollar for dollar. But we do need to raise enough to be competitive — which we can totally do if (and this is a big if) we invest a fraction of the roughly $300 billion that liberal donors spend each year on charity.”)
I’ve known and worked with Beth for a long time, and having a visionary, lifelong movement leader like her leading this charge at MVP is a big deal.
→ From her bio: Beth has organized and supported organizing for 15 years, spanning student, union, community, and electoral organizing. She started organizing as a student leader at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on campus worker issues and college affordability, inspiring her to work as a union organizer at AFSCME and as the National Coordinator of the Student Labor Action Project early in her career. Beth supported community organizations to incubate and grow nonpartisan civic engagement programs at the Massachusetts Voter Table (State Voices affiliate), where she started as the Field Coordinator and served as the Executive Director for five years.
Interim Director of State Programs: Val Benavidez
After over four impactful years strengthening our work, our Co-Directors of State Programs, Sarah Chaisson-Warner and Javier Morillo, have decided to depart MVP.
I want to share my deepest appreciation for Sarah and Javier and all they have brought to MVP and their leadership of the State Programs team over the past four years. They have held and led our State Programs team with the deepest commitment and care. They have wrestled with big strategic questions and pushed me to be a better leader, and they have supported their team and our partners with skill and thoughtfulness.
Sarah has brought our political strategy to a whole new level of sophistication. And I’ll never forget how, just days after the 2024 elections, when so many of us were still stunned and depressed, she presented the strategy to our team and our donors for what it would take to strike a blow at the heart of authoritarianism over the coming two years. And Javier helped envision and bring to life the “Minnesota Miracle Playbook” — the decade-plus-long organizing project that transformed the politics of that state — and has helped our team begin to adapt that playbook in states across the country. It has been an honor to have them at MVP, and we are cheering them on for what’s ahead.
Thankfully for us, they have both offered to stay through July 31 to ensure a smooth transition. Stepping up in the interim to lead our state programs is Val Benavidez, who previously served on our Foundations team and brings over 25 years of organizing and leadership in the movement.
→ From her bio: Before MVP, she was the President and Executive Director for the Texas Freedom Network (TFN), a leading statewide social-justice and movement-building organization. Val assumed the role of TFN President in November 2020, having previously served as Chief Program Officer and in other key roles for over 18 years.
Basically, Val comes to us battle-tested from having run and transformed a key MVP partner org in a huge authoritarian red state, and having a lot of national alliance-building and strategic experience as well. She brings a ton of management experience from leading TFN, an organization with roughly 40 full-time staff. She officially became Interim Director of State Programs on June 1, and will serve in this role through the fall elections to create stability and continuity, and to give us time to figure out what we need and build a long-term plan for State Programs leadership. Whatever role Val ends up in, she is a keeper — a huge, amazing new addition to the team!
