Team
Anna Bakalis is the Executive Director at Popular Comms. She has worked for over 20 years as a union communications director, media strategist, and journalist. She has successfully led and re-tooled union communications shops for the last decade. She created the messaging strategies in the successful L.A. teachers strike in 2019. Most recently Anna was the Labor Strategy Director at Popular Comms. She previously was the President of Organize! Media, a communications firm dedicated to developing and implementing strategies to support unions and other social justice organizations.
Cicia Lee is the Training & Partnerships Director at Popular Comms. Cicia has worked for ten years as an organizer, trainer, and movement strategist. They trained thousands of leaders in their previous role with Momentum, a movement training institute and incubator that helped launch groups like Sunrise Movement, Dissenters, and IfNotNow. They began organizing in faith communities on economic and criminal justice campaigns with Faith in Action (formerly PICO). They are also currently a trainer with Training for Change’s Organizing Skills Institute, and a PhD student at Brown.
Jonathan Smucker is co-founder of Popular Comms, and serves as Board President and Senior Strategist. He has worked for over 25 years as a political organizer, campaigner, and strategist, and has trained thousands of organizers and social movement participants. He is the co-founder of Lancaster Stands Up, Pennsylvania Stands Up, Common Defense, and Beyond the Choir, and is a sociology PhD candidate at UC Berkeley and author of Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals.
Allison Troy is co-founder and Research and Partnerships Director of Popular Comms. She received her PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Denver and spent ten years as an academic, researching and teaching on the topics of human emotion and stress. She became active as an organizer in Lancaster, PA in 2016, where she has been a volunteer leader in Lancaster Stands Up and multiple local campaigns, including the Jess King for Congress campaign. In 2019, she ran for local office for Township Commissioner and won.
Board & Advisory Board
We are currently developing our Board of Directors and Advisory Board, which now include Jules Berkman-Hill, Helen Brosnan, Kamau Chege, Bill Fletcher Jr, George Goehl, Ian Haney López, Elizabeth McKenna, Chantal Mouffe, Varshini Prakash, Izzy Smith-Wade-El, and Robb Willer. (Bios and photos coming soon!)