‘I felt like I was learning more as an American’

Data Scientist Anela Chan on What It’s Like To Volunteer for a Political Campaign

What’s it like to work on a political campaign? Anela Chan is a senior data scientist at HBO, formerly with Tumblr, who recently completed two projects as a TFC volunteer.

Chan first worked on a GOTV texting project for Chris Hurst’s successful campaign to flip VA-12 and then on an internal project to increase the efficiency of all future texting-related TFC projects. She took time out of her busy schedule to speak with us about her experiences.

The digital aspect of Tech for Campaigns is going to go further in this day and age, and a lot of campaigns don’t necessarily have that expertise. I think it’s already moving the needle, which is impressive for an organization that is so young.

Tech For Campaigns (TFC): Anela, thanks for taking the time to talk to us! Would you start us off by telling us a little bit about yourself?

Anela Chan: Well, by day I work as a senior data scientist at HBO on the data solutions team. I’m part of an analytics group that works through the organization from marketing and finance to digital products. I‘ve been working in data science for a few years now, but it tends to be very profit-oriented, especially in New York; you’re often working in adtech or fintech. So I’m interested in using my off hours to apply some of those skills to more public interest organizations.

I think many of us in the tech community were very upset by the 2016 election, and I was one of them, so I wanted to get more involved politically.

TFC: Have you always been involved in politics, or have recent events made a difference for you?

AC: No, I have not always been involved in politics! I would say I could have been called apathetic until, I don’t know, 26? It started to interest me when I was living abroad in Australia, and I would hear the news coming from the United States, but I felt like I couldn’t really do anything about it. I came back to the U.S. in 2015 and wanted to be more engaged.

It’s definitely a new development. And then the election gave me the extra oomph to really take action besides voting and posting on social media.

TFC: What made you decide to volunteer with Tech for Campaigns specifically?

AC: There were a lot of orgs starting up in the aftermath of the election. I heard about Tech for Campaigns through a colleague at Tumblr, and I was really impressed with how quickly it got off the ground and that they were using technology. I definitely consider myself a technologist, having worked at tech companies prior to HBO.

I think some of the other organizations have smart strategies, but they’re often using traditional methods like phone-banking. I definitely think the digital aspect of Tech for Campaigns is going to go further in this day and age, and a lot of campaigns don’t necessarily have that expertise. I think it’s already moving the needle, which is impressive for an organization that is so young.

TFC: Can you tell us what it was like to volunteer on a campaign with TFC?

AC: Sure! So I was on the Chris Hurst [VA-12] campaign, specifically on Hustle, an SMS platform, for Get Out The Vote efforts. We were organized into a small team with a project manager, one person on message crafting, one on operations, and me on data analytics. We adopted a working style that was very much like working in a tech company, working in week-long sprints. Because we were launching waves of texts every week, it just naturally fit that way.

We would have weekly meetings, and then go off and do our work, whether it be working on the messages, or in my case, data analytics. The process went for six weeks until the election. We had a couple of calls with the campaign during that time, but our campaign had a dedicated staff member who was pretty open about speaking with us as well. It was really cool to work with them, and with the other people on my team, too. I had never worked for anything political, but almost everyone on my team had, so I felt like I learned a lot from them.

I’m glad that Tech for Campaigns does a lot of work on these down ballot races because … these candidates are going to be tomorrow’s state and federal candidates.

TFC: Would you do it again?

AC: Yeah, absolutely! First of all, I just really enjoyed working on a campaign. I was telling one of my teammates, “I’m hooked, I want to work on campaigns always, now.” I just feel like you have tremendous impact. I do a lot of volunteer work, especially in data science, but it’s kind of hard to see your impact. With this, you feel like you’re having a very large impact, so it’s really high ROI.

I would definitely work on a campaign again. And working with Tech for Campaigns, specifically, was a lot of fun. I worked on the [Texting] Playbook project afterwards to distill some of this knowledge about running SMS campaigns through Hustle. I’m really glad that they’re trying to institutionalize the work that we did.

TFC: Is there anything else you’d like to add that we haven’t covered?

AC: I’m glad that Tech for Campaigns does a lot of work on these down-ballot races because I believe that, not only do state legislatures control the election maps, but also these candidates are going to be tomorrow’s state and federal candidates. So this work has long-term impact.

Also, for me, it was fun to work with parts of the country — Virginia — that I didn’t really know anything about. I felt like I was learning more as an American.

And finally, Chris Hurst was successful and flipped the district, so that was really exciting! It was great to feel good on election night instead of depressed.

Edited for length and clarity.

If you want to join Anela and get involved on a campaign in 2018 to help turn states blue, join the TFC Community!