GINA COOPER
Gina Cooper is the founder and past CEO of Netroots Nation, formerly knows as YearlyKos, the most dynamic and influential political organization to emerge from the early years of the progressive blogosphere. Her approach to online politics, which relies on technology to bring together engaged Americans and political experts, has become a cornerstone of the online progressive movement in America. Many of the nation’s best known politicians and journalists have credited Cooper and Netroots Nation for fostering a much-needed civic space for discussions of policy and politics online.

Cooper’s unlikely personal story and her groundbreaking work have been featured in a plethora of major books and articles about the emergence of online politics. In Taking on the System, the blogger Markos Moulitsas cited Cooper as an “inspirational force” who “navigated the obstacles of blogger egos, selfish interest groups, a lack of supplies and funds, demanding conference hall labor unions and an impossible to please audience” to “stage a top notch production.

In his critically acclaimed book, The Argument, Matt Bai, the political writer for the New York Times Magazine, featured Cooper both in her role with Netroots Nation and as a volunteer for Ned Lamont’s Senate campaign in Connecticut. “They seemed to have forgotten that Gina was a blogger who had just arrived from out of town,” Bai wrote, referring to Lamont’s campaign aides. “It was as if she had been doing this for years.”

When Cooper resigned from Netroots Nation in 2008, Garrett Graff noted in the Washingtonian: “Gina Cooper, who for three years has been the convention’s chief (and more recently full-time) organizer and has in that time come to be known as one of the netroots’ spokespeople, announced that she was stepping down—off to pursue new adventures and new challenges. After all, she’d delivered the bloggers into the ranks of the Democratic elite. What more was there to do here?”

Now 39, Gina Cooper was born in the ruby red state of Tennessee to a single mother who died from cancer when Cooper was 13. Raised largely by an older sister in a conservative southern family, Gina relied too on the encouragement of her teachers to overcome her own difficult circumstances, and she resolved to provide that same guidance for others. She obtained her MAT in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Memphis and her Bachelors in Natural Science from Christian Brother’s University. (In 2008, that school honored her with its Distinguished Alumna Award.) Cooper taught high school science and math for 13 years in Memphis, an experience she counts among the most rewarding in her life.

In 2003, like so many other Americans, Cooper was insprired by Howard Dean’s “people-powered” campaign and started to blog. “It turned out,” Matt Bai wrote, “that Gina was a sharp and devastating writer.” She soon found herself driven by a vision of what ordinary Americans, empowered by the Internet, could accomplish if they had the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with each other and with their elected representatives.

Acting on that vision, working entirely as a volunteer, she spearheaded the creation of the YearlyKos Convention, a one-of-a-kind political event that attracted activists, experts, and elected officials to its first gathering in Las Vegas in 2006. Among those who attended and spoke were Dean, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and then Virginia Governor Mark Warner. More than a hundred of the nation’s leading reprters also attended, transforming Cooper into a spokesperson for the online progressives.

In 2007, Cooper’s YearlyKos team held its second annual convention in Chicago. The event once again became the most important and best-attended political conference of the year and featured a debate attended by all but one one of the eight major Democratic presidential candidates. Many in the national press noted that the YearlyKos Presidential Leadership Forum was one of the most exciting and substantive debates of the primary season.

In 2008 the YearlyKos Convention was renamed Netroots Nation and continued to achieve new milestones. Working tirelessly to narrow the divide between online activists and their elected leaders, Cooper moderated a keynote discussion with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Vice President Al Gore. The event drew acclaim from technology experts and activists alike for it’s inclusion of a unique citizen-driven participation portal, AsktheSpeaker.org, which allowed the Speaker to accept questions composed by and voted on by conference attendees and non-attendees alike. Following the 2008 convention Cooper was named as a Top 40 under 40 rising leader by the New Leadership Council.

In 2008 Cooper was asked to serve on then candidate Barack Obama’s policy advisory committee for Technology, Media, and Telecommunications. She served on the E-Government-E-Democracy subcommittee.

In 2009 Cooper traveled to Taiwan to advise top government officials on open government initiatives.

Cooper continues to explore innovative ways in which the Internet can help ordinary Americans become invested in finding their own political solutions. Cooper’s latest start up, Project One Page (POP), is an independent, bi-partisan effort to help facilitate new ideas for governance by building a bridge between government and the people. An innovative online resource for obtaining one-page policy proposals, POP provides a new approach to civic participation by providing individuals access to experts and leaders; and experts and leaders access to the ideas of private citizens.

She is also a founding partner of Middle Coast Strategies.

Cooper lives with her husband and a variety of country critters in Sonoma County, California. She blogs her personal thoughts as a citizen-turned-political-operative at ginacooper.com.