BOARD OF ADVISORS
Celinda Lake
Celinda Lake and her firm Lake Research Partners are known for cutting edge research on issues including the economy, health care, the environment and education. Since its formation, her company has become one of the most respected polling firms in the United States, with its Battleground poll widely recognized as one of the leading national issue and election thermometers. In the healthcare arena, her research showed that key messages needed to include the importance of getting healthcare costs down for all Americans, not just the uninsured, and the need to reposition the uninsured as 8 in 10 working families.
Lake is one of the Democratic Party's leading political strategists, serving as tactician and senior advisor to the national party committees, dozens of Democratic incumbents and challengers at all levels of the electoral process. Her work also took her to advise fledgling democratic parties in several post-war Eastern European countries, including Bosnia, and South Africa.
Lake is one of the nation's foremost experts on electing women candidates and on framing issues to women voters. American Politics calls Lake a "super-strategist or, better yet, the Godmother," and Working Woman says she is "arguably the most influential woman in her field." She works for many of this Nation’s most prominent candidates and elected officials, including Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader of the US House of Representatives.
An experienced moderator, Lake is widely recognized as an expert on women in the economy and has conducted focus group research throughout the United States on a large variety of topics including, health care, environmental and immigration issues. A native of Montana and one of the political world's most avid whitewater rafters, Lake holds a Masters degree in Political Science and Survey Research from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and a certificate in political science from the University of Geneva, in Geneva, Switzerland. Lake received her undergraduate degree from Smith College in Massachusetts, where she graduated Summa Cum Laude with honors and was recently awarded the Distinguished Alumna Medal by the College. She has recently co-authored a book with republican pollster Kellyanne Conway entitled “What Women Really Want: How Women are Quietly Erasing Political, Racial, Class and Religious Lines to Change the Way We Live”.
