Heather Booth

Heather Booth is one of the leading strategists about progressive issue campaigns and driving issues in elections in the United States.
She has been an organizer for over forty years starting in the civil rights and women's movement.

She was the founding Director and is now President of the Midwest Academy, training social change leaders and organizers. She has been involved in and managed many political campaigns and was the Training Director of the Democratic National Committee. In 2000, she was the Director of the NAACP National Voter Fund, which helped to increase African American election turnout by nearly 2 million voters. She has been a consultant to a variety of social change and political groups that have included MoveOn.org, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and the National Council of La Raza. She was the lead consultant, directing the founding of the Campaign for Comprehensive Immigration Reform. In 2008 she was the director of the Health Care Campaign for the AFL-CIO. In 2009, she directed the campaign passing President Obama’s first budget. In 2010 she was the founding director of Americans for Financial Reform, fighting to regulate the financial industry. She was the national coordinator for recent events around marriage equality across the United States. She is now consulting with the National Organization for Women, the Voter Participation Center and is advisor to the Alliance for Citizenship (a coalition of the immigration reform campaign).

She has been a board member and Executive Committee member of USAction since its founding and a board member of the Center for Community Change. She is a partner in Democracy Partners. She graduated from the University of Chicago with a BA in 1967 and an MA in 1970.