Kristina Wilfore
Kristina Wilfore holds Bachelor degrees in Political Science and Broadcast Communications from Washington State University and a Master of Public Administration and Policy from the University of Washington Evans School of Public Affairs.
Combining substantive policy expertise with a wealth of experience in issue-based campaigns and strategic communications, Kristina Wilfore serves as Executive Director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center and Foundation. As Director, Wilfore works with state and national progressive organizations to reinvigorate the initiative process by lending technical assistance-including guidance on strategy and message-to key initiative campaigns, coordinating ballot language research and drafting efforts, training activists and placing them on targeted initiatives nationwide, and directing funders to critical initiative campaigns.
Over the last eight years Wilfore has worked on dozens of ballot measures and state legislative campaigns to lower the price of prescription drugs, improve public transportation, protect clean election laws, reduce class-sizes, reform unemployment insurance, create family and medical leave insurance, and ensure equal pay, for example.
Prior to BISC, Wilfore was the Communications Director of the Center for Policy Alternatives where she helped embed progressive economic and social justice policies in state law and led leadership and message training workshops for over 1000 state legislators and activists a year.
Previous to working with the Center for Policy Alternatives, Wilfore helped launch the Economic Opportunity Institute (EOI) in Washington state, where she organized research and media strategies for passage of I-688, the ballot initiative to increase Washington's minimum wage. While at EOI she also assisted in the design of a model welfare-to-work program and established the nation?s first-ever childcare wage and career ladder (while helping unionize childcare workers with SEIU). Prior to that Wilfore served as Interim Communications Director of the University of Washington Evans School of Public Affairs and Marketing and Fundraising Assistant for the Cascade Center for Public Service, a training institute for elected officials and nonprofit administrators. In 1997 she was Press Secretary of a successful City of Seattle proposition to create a $69 million fund for health and social services for the Seattle School District and low-income families in Seattle.
Wilfore has designed legislative and media strategies for direct service nonprofits, domestic violence and family planning agencies and for programs such as AmeriCorp and Vista. Wilfore volunteers with Virginia NARAL and the D.C. Creative Writing Workshop and serves on the advisory board of a civic journalism project, Journalists Hearing Citizens. Wilfore grew up in Kalispell, Montana.