Name Gloria Totten | ||
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Gloria totten wants you to run for america
Gloria Totten is a nonprofit executive who, for more than 20 years, has directed organizations and grassroots organizing campaigns on the federal, state and local levels.
Contents
- Gloria totten wants you to run for america
- NARAL Pro Choice America
- Progressive Majority
- Public Leadership Institute
- References
She is currently the founder and president of Public Leadership Institute, an American nonpartisan nonprofit policy and leadership center that focuses on issues of equity and justice at the state and local levels of government. Prior to that, Totten led Progressive Majority from 2001-2015, served as political director of NARAL from 1996-2001, and as Executive Director for Maryland Maryland NARAL from 1993-1996. In her home state of Minnesota, she worked as the Education Director for Pro-Choice Resources, President and Lobbyist for the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Media Chair for It’s Time Minnesota!
Totten serves as chair of the board of directors for Brave New Films and as a board member for the New American Leaders Initiative. She is an Advisory Committee Member for the Drum Major Institute Scholars Program, Political Parity, Progress Now, Wellstone Action and the Women’s Information Network. Totten was named a "Rising Star of Politics" in 2002 by Campaigns & Elections magazine.
NARAL Pro-Choice America
Totten first worked with NARAL as the executive director of Maryland NARAL from 1993-1996. During her tenure, she served as the organization's chief lobbyist and strategist, chairperson for the state pro-choice coalition, director of the political action committee, and was responsible for raising the annual operating and program budgets. She served as the affiliate representative to the national NARAL Pro-Choice America Board of Directors, and her affiliate received numerous awards during her tenure there, including the 1993 Campus Organizing Award, 1994 Diversity Organizing Award and 1995 Outstanding Affiliate Award.
In 1996, Totten took a position with NARAL's national office as its political director, where she oversaw the organization's electoral and grassroots work and managed its 27 state affiliates. While there, she worked to develop the organization's first nationwide pro-choice voter file, which consisted of 2.9 million pro-choice identified voters in 2000. She also devised all of NARAL's advocacy campaigns, including numerous ballot initiative campaigns, legislative battles, and the Stop Ashcroft! campaign in 2001. During the 2000 elections, she created and implemented a $12 million electoral program, with campaigns in sixteen states for the Presidential contest, eight Senate races, and twenty-four House races.
Progressive Majority
In 2001, Totten was recruited to head the newly created group Progressive Majority, which was designed to help elect progressive candidates at all levels of the U.S. government. Since its inception, the organization helped elect hundreds of candidates and built up a "farm team" of thousands of potential candidates. Under Totten’s leadership, the organization focused on key state legislative races and developed the most comprehensive national progressive candidate recruitment program in the country. She also established Progressive Majority's Racial Justice Campaign, to elect candidates of color and increase the diversity of local and state governments. Progressive Majority merged with Wellstone Action in late 2015.
Public Leadership Institute
Totten founded the Public Leadership Institute (PLI) in 2011 to raise public awareness on key issues of equity and justice and to develop public leaders who will improve the economic and social conditions of all Americans. PLI hosts the largest network of progressive lawmakers in the nation, with more than 13,000 legislators, council members, commissioners and supervisors, as well as thousands of state-level activists. PLI creates and disseminates research, talking points and model legislation on a wide range of state and local issues related to economic opportunity, civil rights, education, healthcare, the environment and reproductive freedom. Its best known policy tools are the Progressive Agenda for States and Localities, a menu of specific policy ideas and model legislation, and the Playbook for Abortion Rights, which offers 29 model state and local bills for reproductive freedom. PLI also conducts a program of message and communications training for policy leaders called Voicing Our Values. The cornerstone of the program is a message book co-authored by Totten, also titled Voicing Our Values, which includes practical messaging on many specific issue areas.