Jess O’Connell
CO-FOUNDER & CEO
Jess O’Connell is co-founder and CEO at NEWCO Strategies, a majority-women and majority LGBT-owned firm. For nearly twenty years, Jess has worked to advance progressive people and policies all over the country. She’s held senior positions with Hillary Clinton, Pete Buttigieg, the Democratic National Committee, EMILY’s List, Center for American Progress, the US Global Leadership Coalition, ONE, and the Children’s Defense Fund.
In October 2020, Jess organized and implemented the first National COVID-19 Remembrance held on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. to call attention to the lives lost and disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Twenty-thousand empty chairs were placed on the National Mall to represent a fraction of the over 200,000 lives lost due to COVID-19. The Remembrance event was featured on the front page of the NY Times, CNN(1), CNN(2), Washington Post, CBS News, ABC News, Reuters, and more than 50 other national and local news clips. It was also featured in numerous “Pictures of the Day” by media outlets such as Axios, Politico, and the Washington Post, and highlighted by Sen. Hirono (D-HI) during the Senate Judiciary Hearing for Justice Barrett.
During the 2020 Presidential primary, Jess served as a Senior Advisor to Pete Buttigieg where she led the early states strategy resulting in a history-making 1st place finish in Iowa and 2nd place finish in New Hampshire. It’s the first time an openly gay candidate for president has ever won delegates to a major party convention. She previously served in senior positions on Hillary Clinton’s (2008) and Howard Dean’s (2004) presidential campaigns.
Following the 2016 elections, Jess served as the CEO at the Democratic National Committee where she oversaw an historic reorganization and created an expanded purpose for the DNC. She introduced a back-to-basics strategy to organize everywhere, helped to revitalize and modernize a broken party, and made unprecedented investments in state parties. During her tenure the team doubled and Democrats won elections across the country, including 36 state legislative flips from red-to-blue and record-breaking statewide victories in New Jersey, Virginia and Alabama. Jess was later tapped by Chairman Tom Perez to lead the 2020 DNC Convention site selection committee.
As Executive Director of EMILY’s List, the largest political organization for women in the U.S., Jess led efforts to help elect the most diverse Congress in history at that time - quadrupling the number of women of color elected to the Senate and helping to elect eight new women to the House, a majority of them women of color. She oversaw state and local programs to elect over 250 women. At the top of the ticket, she and EMILY’s List worked to help Hillary Clinton become the first woman ever to win the presidential nomination of a major party. In response to the 2016 election, Jess helped launch Run to Win, a national campaign that recruited over 40,000 women to run for office.
Jess has held senior positions with advocacy groups at the intersection of policy and politics. At progressive think tank Center for American Progress, she managed the day-to-day operations and worked on projects ranging from income inequality to the White House Summit on Working Families. Prior to that, she served as National Field Director for the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition organizing more than 400 NGOs, academic institutions, Fortune 500 companies, and military Generals in support of international budget priorities and smart power.
Jess began her advocacy work in Colorado where she served as the 1st woman Director of the AIDS Walk. She went on to work on Congressional campaigns in Colorado, Illinois, and returned to her home state of Arizona to manage a race that elected the first Democrat ever to AZ-01.
For five years, Jess served as Founder and CEO of Youth Trek, an organization for underserved girls. Jess curated trips from Washington, D.C., to Seattle, Portland, Chicago, Atlanta, New York and Philadelphia to meet with women leaders from Nike, Coke, Getty Images, CARE, Alvin Ailey, NBC Today Show, Ralph Lauren, the Centers for Disease Control, and others. Jess has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR & more. She lives in Maryland with her wife, son, dog, and cat.
