Jeff Blum

Jeff Blum is executive director of USAction, a federation of 22 state affiliates that organize for progressive change. Under his leadership, USAction has broken ground on health care, budget and taxes, Social Security and the war in Iraq.

Jeff Blum’s experience in grassroots organizing is extensive. He founded and directed Pennsylvania Citizen Action, where he helped lead successful campaigns to reform the state’s public utility law, create a toxics right to know law and expand access to generic drugs for senior citizens. He has also worked for the Peoples’ Coalition for Peace and Justice, Massachusetts Fair Share, People for the American Way (where he co-coordinated the campaign to establish AmeriCorps) and was Transportation Policy Director for Citizen Action, leading the first-ever national campaign to promote public transit and Amtrak in the 1997 highway law reauthorization.

Blum also served as President of Maryland Citizen Action, founder and member of the Advisory Board of the Jewish Funds for Justice and as a member of the board of Citizens for Tax Justice. He is co-chair, Health Care for America Now; on the board of America Votes and is an advisor to Progress Now.

In Pennsylvania, he ran for state Senate in 1990 and was the Northeast Pennsylvania Regional Director of the Clinton/Gore Campaign in 1992. He has a BSN from Boston University and attended the University of Chicago and the University of Warwick, England. He and his wife, Ellen Cassedy, reside in Takoma Park, Maryland, and have two children.