Kristina Wilfore

Kristina Wilfore is one of the country’s leading experts on state policy and politics – having spent 10 years working in approximately 35 state capitals and on dozens of ballot initiatives across the country. As Executive Director of BISC, Kristina works with state and national progressive organizations to reinvigorate the initiative process by providing guidance on strategy and message to key initiative campaigns, coordinating ballot language research and drafting efforts, polling, training activists and placing them on targeted initiatives nationwide, and directing funders to critical campaigns.

Under Kristina’s leadership, BISC has flourished into the central convener within the progressive community around the strategic use of ballot initiatives. Combining substantive policy expertise with a wealth of experience in issue-based campaigns and strategic communications, Kristina and BISC have been instrumental in helping pass laws to increase the minimum wage in four states since 1998, guard clean election and civil rights laws, reduce class-sizes and fund quality public education, fight against medical malpractice caps, and protect environmental regulations, among other victories.

Prior to BISC, Kristina was Communications Director of the Center for Policy Alternatives where she helped pass progressive economic and social justice policies in dozens of states and led leadership and message training workshops for over 1000 state legislators and activists a year. Over the years Kristina has designed legislative and media strategies for direct service nonprofits, domestic violence and family planning agencies and for programs such as AmeriCorp and Vista.

Kristina has appeared as a guest on Fox News and CNN, and has served as a source for major news stories in USA Today, The New York Times, Los Angles Times, The Washington Post and The Nation, among others. She is committed to training as a fundamental mechanism to gain back power and serves as an advisory member of New York University’s Political Campaign Management program and Democratic GAIN, and is a member of the Women’s Information Network (WIN) and the American Association of Political Consultants. She is an occasional speaker at Campaigns and Elections seminars and is a recipient of WIN’s 2004 Young Women of Achievement award and Campaigns and Election’s “Rising Stars of 2004.” She volunteers at local food banks and shelters with D.C. cares and works with the D.C. Creative Writing Workshop (a nonprofit literary arts project at Charles Hart Middle School that provides creative writing programs for at-risk youth).

Prior to moving to the national political scene, Kristina worked in Washington state with a wide variety of issue and training based organizations. She helped launch the Economic Opportunity Institute where she oversaw the research and earned media strategy for passage of the statewide minimum wage. She also assisted in the design of a model welfare-to-work program and established the nation’s first-ever childcare wage and career ladder (while helping unionize childcare workers with SEIU). Kristina also served as Communications Director of the University of Washington Evans School of Public Affairs and Marketing and Fundraising Associate for an executive level leadership and management facility for elected officials and administrators at the Cascade Center for Public Service.

Kristina is a native of Kalispell, Montana. She holds a Master of Public Administration from the University of Washington Evans School of Public Affairs and Bachelor degrees in Political Science and Broadcast Communication from Washington State University.

Kristina loves cooking for friends, and has been known to whip up a tricky dessert in the wee hours of the morning. She is an accomplished photographer, and a collector of jazz and blues recordings. Kristina appreciates both political biographies and single malts named Glen, often at the same time.