Ann is a principal at grassroots solutions and joined the firm on November 1, 2000 – three days before the infamous “hanging chad” election of George W. Bush. Social by nature and still relatively new to Minnesota, she knew she’d found her home in the midst of all the phone calls, drop-in visits, nightly phone bank call sheet reports, and buzzing energy that is grassroots solutions the week before Election Day.
Today, Ann works with nonprofit and corporate clients to develop engagement strategies that help them connect more deeply with their members or customers, convert passive supporters into champions, and build grassroots programs that help make things happen on a local, state, national, and international scale. She has particular expertise in designing and delivering training and technical assistance programs that build permanent grassroots capacity while advancing a cause. Her clients have included the Lance Armstrong Foundation, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, The Sunflower Foundation, and One Iowa Education Fund.
Before joining grassroots solutions, Ann spent 15 years in the nonprofit sector, working in health care, child and family services, and health promotion. In every job she held she combined direct programming with policy change and grassroots organizing; from organizing Hmong refugee families to demand better housing conditions to advocating for state funding for programs for kids and families, Ann understood the connection between communities and the policies that affect their well-being. She knew her path was to organize and she wove it into all the work she did.
Ann credits her family’s dinner table political debates for her knack for listening closely and focusing on the heart of an issue. Her parents’ lifelong commitment to volunteering gave her insight into what it takes to keep people involved in an organization, and her stint living with relatives in Las Vegas to tend bar at a local watering hole stoked her appetite for taking risks. When she’s not thinking about organizing, Ann is sorting her daughter’s rock collection, enduring yet another round of Star Wars play with her son, digging in the dirt with her husband Darrick, or dreaming of the day when she can have a paint horse and stable outside her back door.