I am very pleased to announce that, effective immediately, Matt Smith has been appointed the President of Stratcom. I will remain CEO. This is an important change for Stratcom as we build the next phase of the business, and our service to the political, union, charitable and non-profit communities.

Matt has been at Stratcom since 2010, starting as a Senior Associate, then becoming Director of Research, Engagement and Targeting in 2012. As a Director he has built up our research and engagement practice significantly and has been instrumental in successfully introducing new products to our clients, including Telephone Town Halls, IVR polling, donor research and stewardship strategies, microtargeting and Big Data organizing.

As President Matt will have overall responsibility for the running of Stratcom, I will remain fully active in the business but will now focus more on direct client work as well as the broad business direction of Stratcom, including new partnerships and opportunities in the UK and the U.S.

Prior to joining Stratcom Matt co-founded a Vancouver based campaigning firm, Tactical Outcomes, and was one of the architects of Mayor Gregor Robertson’s and Vision Vancouver’s success in the last 3 Vancouver elections. Matt led the design and implementation of Vision’s highly successful voter contact strategy in each of the last 3 election campaigns.

Matt has a Masters from the University of Toronto in Electoral Geography and has published academic articles and papers on public policy decision making, the implementation of the Burrard Bridge Bike Lane, electoral reform, and visible minorities’ electability in municipal elections in Vancouver and the GTA. Matt has spoken on these topics and many more at numerous conferences including CanRoots, the Public Affairs Association of Canada, the Institute for Research on Public Policy, the American Association of Geographers, and the Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement.

Matt has distinguished himself in his time at Stratcom, building his department and our service offerings to clients, enhancing our operations, and helping ensure client service excellence. He will bring these skills and others to the company as a whole with this appointment.

I’m also pleased to announce that Dan Abraham will become a Vice President of Stratcom in recognition of his key role leading our fundraising work. Dan will continue to focus and expand his role in this area.

As one of the longest standing Stratcom staff, Dan has been integral to the success of the business, and will continue to be so in this new role, where he will seek to expand our work further into the digital fundraising areas, and strengthen the work in all of our fundraising services.

Dan studied Journalism at Ryerson and served as a member of the Fundraising Measurement Consulting Group for the development of the CMA’s Fundraiser’s Handbook. Dan also literally wrote the book on telephone fundraising by contributing the ‘Telefundraising’ chapter of the “Excellence in Fundraising in Canada, Volume 2.”

We look forward to working with our existing clients, new clients, and other business partners as we take this next step in Stratcom’s evolution.