Joe Trippi

Joe Trippi—heralded on the cover of The New Republic as the man who “reinvented campaigning”—was born in California and began his political career working on Edward M. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1980. His work in presidential politics continued with the campaigns of Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, Richard Gephardt, Howard Dean and most recently John Edwards.

As a campaign manager, Trippi has run Presidential, Senate, gubernatorial and mayoral campaigns. He was selected by former Vice President Walter Mondale to manage Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses in 1984 and later went on to run several key states for the Mondale for President campaign. In 1988, Trippi was the Deputy National Campaign Manager for Richard Gephardt’s presidential campaign.

In 2004, he was National Campaign Manager for Howard Dean’s presidential campaign, pioneering the use of online technology to organize what became the largest grassroots movement in presidential politics. Through Trippi’s innovative use of the internet for small-donor fundraising, Dean for America ended up raising more money than any Democratic presidential campaign in history, all with donations averaging less than $100 each. Trippi’s innovations have brought fundamental change to the electoral system and will be the model for how all future political campaigns are run.

Four years later, Trippi signed on with Senator John Edwards as a senior consultant focusing on the message, internet strategy as well as producing the Senator’s television commercials.

On the international front, Trippi has been involved in various political campaigns overseas. He worked for then PASOK leader Andreas Papandreou’s successful campaign for Prime Minister of Greece in 1993 as well as his son George Papandreou in 2007. Trippi advised British Prime Minister Tony Blair during his successful bid for a third time in 2005. He also worked on behalf of Romano Prodi in his successful bid for Prime Minister of Italy in 2006. In 2007, he consulted on text messaging strategies to the opposition Action Congress (AC) Party in Nigeria.

John Trippi has been profiled in GQ, Wired, Fast Company, The New Republic, and The New York Times Magazine. He is a CBS News political analyst and former Harvard University fellow. He currently heads the Washington, D.C. political consultancy, Trippi & Associates.

In addition to his work in politics, Trippi has consulted with a number of corporations and high-tech companies including MasterCard, Toyota, Yahoo, Bebo, SES Americom, LabCorp, Lionsgate Films, Google, IBM, BestBuy, MSNBC, Wave Systems, Progeny Linux Systems, and Smart Paper networks.

Trippi is the author of, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet and the Overthrow of Everything, the story of how his revolutionary use of the Internet and an impassioned, contagious desire to overthrow politics as usual grew into a national grassroots movement and changed the face of politics, and indeed many aspects of American life, forever.

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