Yana Kucher

Name: Yana Kucher
Title: Operations Director

Yana graduated from the University of Arizona in 1997 with a degree in Russian, Spanish, and Japanese, and a desire to travel the world. However, after spending her first two years out of college teaching English and Environmental Education in Eastern Europe, Yana felt the need to start making a difference on the issues she cared about back home. A few days after returning to the States she launched her organizing career with the Public Interest Network, starting out canvassing and then directing grassroots campaign offices for the Fund for the Public Interest. She oversaw the fundraising of over $1 million for progressive organizations such as Environment California, the Sierra Club, and the Human Rights Campaign, and helped build the public support necessary to win campaigns to protect 60 million acres of national forests and to double the use of renewable energy in the state. She went on to join Environment California's program staff, as a Fellow and then as the Environmental Health Advocate. In this role she fought to keep toxic chemicals out of our air, water, and products.

As election season neared, Yana realized the best way to impact these issues was to get better progressive champions elected into office, so she took a leave from her nonpartisan work in 2004 to work on the central leadership staff of MoveOn.org and Grassroots Campaigns' "Leave No Voter Behind" precinct-level voter mobilization program, and again in 2006 on their successful "Call for Change" campaign to win back a Democratic majority in Congress. After several years on the central staff of the Public Interest Network, Yana joined the Work for Progress team doing Targeting and Data Analysis for Progressive Future's national voter mobilization and persuasion effort to elect President Obama. Yana now oversees business and administrative matters for the organization. She is most motivated by opportunities to get new people involved in the political process.