Principals
Katrin Verclas is a recognized expert in mobile communications for social impact. She is a principal at Calder Strategies, focusing on mobile strategy, sector analysis, impact evaluation, effectiveness and ROI assessment, and evaluating organizations’ capacity for implementing mobile campaigns.
She recently completed an analysis of mobile use by advocacy organizations for the UN Foundation and Vodafone Foundation Group. Katrin has written widely on the use of mobile phones in citizen participation, for health organizations, and for development.
Katrin is the co-founder and editor of MobileActive.org, a global network of practitioners using mobile phones for social impact. She previously served as the Executive Director of NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network, the national association of IT professionals working in the more than one million nonprofit organizations in the United States.
Katrin has a strong background in IT management, IT in social change organizations, and in philanthropy. She has led several nonprofit organizations, and served as a program officer at the Proteus Fund for six years, focusing on the use of technology in civic and democratic participation, and in government transparency.
She is the editor of a forthcoming book on IT Leadership in organizations published by Wiley & Sons, and is the author of an essay in a book to be published in 2008 on the use of technology in engaging young people in democratic movements. She is a frequent speaker on technology in civil society at national and international conferences and has published numerous articles and publications on technology for social change in leading popular and industry publications.
Katrin serves on the boards of Mobile Voter and NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network. She is based in Amherst, Massachusetts and New York City.
Catherine Geanuracos managed the largest coordinated international social action SMS campaign implemented to date, and helped design, implement, and evaluate the most impactful and innovative voter mobilization campaigns of 2004 and 2006. She is a Principal at Calder Strategies focusing on mobile campaign strategy, campaign implementation, vendor evaluation, RFP development, political use of mobile technology, and mobile innovation.
Catherine manages all interactive strategy and program development for Live Earth, and spearheaded global online and SMS programs for the 7.07.07 Live Earth concerts. In addition to www.liveearth.org, she managed a four-country SMS campaign and the “Friends of Live Earth” program which supported 12,000 local events inspired by Live Earth in 132 countries. She managed all interactive partner relationships, including those with MSN, MySpace, Evite and U.S. and international NGO partners.
Catherine seeks to develop and employ participatory technology to support social advocacy, community-level behavior change and distributed events. She mobilizes real-world action, fundraising and engagement in social issues using interactive platforms and mobile campaigns. She served as a consultant for MoveOn.org Political Action during the last two U.S. election cycles, helping to shape innovative programs that have fundamentally expanded opportunities for political engagement. She helped develop, manage, and evaluate MoveOn’s 2006 “Call for Change” and 2004 “Leave No Voter Behind” campaigns, enlisting hundreds of thousands of volunteers in 30 states who used distributed online and IVR systems to make millions of phone calls and in-person visits to voters in key national elections.
Catherine developed leadership in social advocacy while completing her B.A. at Columbia College, Columbia University. After college she lived in several countries in Latin America, developing HIV prevention programs in Central and South America. She began exploring interactive solutions to community issues while on the senior management team at Larkin Street Youth Services in San Francisco, which she joined after receiving her Master’s in social welfare from UC Berkeley. From 2003-05 she was the Co-Investigator and Project Director for Connect to Protect, an NIH-funded HIV prevention research initiative at UC San Francisco where she applied GIS analysis to community-level health interventions. As a mayoral appointee, she served as co-chair of the San Francisco HIV Health Services Planning Council, allocating $30 million in annual HIV funding for the city of San Francisco. In addition to her work with MoveOn.org, she has been involved in numerous interactive advocacy projects: as the founding CTO of MomsRising.org, as campaign director of LeaveMyChildAlone.org, and as a strategic advisor to DotOrganize. She frequently speaks and writes on the application of technology to political and advocacy initiatives. She is based in Los Angeles.