The Board
Our Board of Directors is comprised of youth vote experts and Democratic leaders.
Young Voter PAC Executive Committee
Tony Cani
Julia Cohen
Jane Fleming Kleeb, Executive Director
Ryan Friedrichs
Ivan Frishberg, Board Chair
Brooke Lierman, Board Treasurer
Jessy Tolkan
Young Voter PAC Federal Committee
Thomas Bates
Guy Cecil
Mike Connery
Jon Isaacs
Latoia Jones
Celinda Lake
Tom Manatos
Crystal Strait
Julie Trute
Young Voter PAC State Committee
Stacy Berger
John Dervin
David Hardt
Billy Joyner
Adam Klaus
Lanya Shapiro
Billy Wimsatt
Tony Cani
Tony Cani has dedicated his life to developing young Democratic leaders, turning out young voters for progressive candidates, and creating the permanent infrastructure necessary to ensure those efforts are sustained long after he is gone. Currently, Tony is the Political Director of the Young Democrats of America where he oversees all their peer-to-peer Democratic youth turnout campaigns, issue advocacy efforts, and collaborative operations with allied organizations.
Prior to working for YDA, Tony was with the Arizona Democratic Party as their Non-Traditional Campaigns Director where he was responsible for creating innovative and new ways to combine traditional field, volunteer, and online activism into one collaborative effort. Prior to that, Tony was one of the National Directors of Generation Dean, Dean for America's groundbreaking youth campaign.
In addition to his professional political career, Tony is a life-long activist and volunteer who served as President of the Young Democrats of Arizona, Chair of YDA’s State Presidents’ Association, President of the Georgetown College Democrats, and has organized young people in every presidential election cycle since 1992.
Julia Cohen
Julia Cohen is the Deputy Director for Campus Progress at American Progress. Previously, Julia Cohen worked at Voxiva, Inc., to lead efforts to develop political and civic engagement technology applications. She also directed projects for AIDS relief and tsunami recovery. Cohen brings over 15 years of experience in United Nations, government, nonprofit, and public health management, civic engagement, advocacy, marketing, fundraising, and technology development along with a deep commitment to inspire, connect, and empower people--particularly young people--to improve lives around the world.
Cohen’s diverse experience includes developing a global political engagement strategy for youth and directing civic programs in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. She led YouthNOISE, a youth participation initiative incubated by Save the Children, which is a web-based portal for teens to take action on issues affecting young people, and was executive director of Youth Vote, the largest nonpartisan coalition created to encourage the civic participation of America’s young adults. Youth Vote consisted of 100 diverse national organizations representing thousands of local groups and millions of young people. Prior to those positions, Cohen worked as vice president of Rock the Vote and in several nonprofit and government agencies, including: Planned Parenthood Federation of America; the US Department of State Office of Population in the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration; the Los Angeles Regional Family Planning Council; the University of California San Francisco Institute for Health Policy Studies; Operation USA, Children Now; College Kids; and the Los Angeles Free Clinic.
Cohen is a board member of WITNESS, which was founded by musician Peter Gabriel to use the power of video to expose human rights abuses. She has a master's degree in public health from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.A. in modern society and social thought from the University of California at Santa Cruz. She is a native of Los Angeles, California.
Jane Fleming Kleeb
Jane Fleming Kleeb serves as the Executive Director of the Young Voter PAC. She comes to the Young Voter PAC after a successful tenure as Executive Director of the Young Democrats of America where she raised over $3 million dollars and helped transform the organization. Jane has worked extensively within various grassroots organizations, foundations and corporations as a director, fundraiser and trainer since 1996. She was also a senior executive at a high-profile access strategies consulting firm, Scott+Yandura and an Executive Assistant at the ACLI. Prior to joining the corporate world, Jane spent most of her time in the non-profit field.
Her ability to work simultaneously on the big picture without losing sight of the details was honed during her years as the Executive Director of the Renfrew Center Foundation for Eating Disorders, Executive Director of an AmeriCorps program and Trainer for community-based projects focused on young people. Jane has a talent for creatively introducing sensitive topics into the mainstream dialogue as well as creating the structure and opportunities for individuals to take action which was shown through her role as lead consultant of the documentary THIN. She can be seen on FOX and MSNBC as a frequent political contributor and has been profiled on CNN, in Rolling Stone and various other print and online media. Jane was recently names one of MTV's Street Team 08 reporters.
Ryan Friedrichs
Ryan Friedrichs has worked to build diverse coalitions to mobilize and empower historically underrepresented communities for the past eleven years. Ryan is a Michigan native and graduate of the University of Michigan. At UofM he worked with the United Farm Workers and founded a nationally recognized community coalition called Voice Your Vote.
In 2000 he helped found and served as National Field Director and then Executive Director for the Youth Vote Coalition, as well as served as national volunteer director for the coalition's partners, including MTV's Choose or Lose campaign.
In 2001 Ryan entered graduate school at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. His master's thesis was one of the first published studies of the cost effectiveness of partisan young voter outreach, focusing on Democratic efforts in Michigan's 2002 election. At the Kennedy School Ryan also served as a teaching assistant to Marshall Ganz and a research assistant to David King and award winning political humorist Al Franken.
After graduating in 2003 Ryan worked for Senator Hillary Clinton's political teams at HillPac and Friends of Hillary, and co-founded and served in 2004 as Campaign Director for the Young Voter Alliance – a member of the national America Votes coalition. Following the election Ryan worked for Andy and Deborah Rappaport's Skyline Public Works foundation, leading a team of professors and consultants evaluating progressive voter mobilization in 2004.
Ryan returned to Michigan for the 2006 elections. He lives and works in Detroit with his wife, Jocelyn Benson, a professor of race and the law and election law at Wayne State University. Ryan currently serves as the Executive Director of Michigan Voice; a statewide collaboration focused progressive communication and on coordinating outreach to historically underrepresented voters, including communities of color, young voters, new citizens, and low income voters.
Ivan Frishberg
Ivan Frishberg is the Young Voter PAC Board Chair and Political Director for Environment America. Ivan has worked as a consultant to Rock the Vote and the John Edwards for President Campaign, advising the campaign on youth and student outreach. He also served as the Vice President with Grassroots Campaigns Inc., an independent political consulting firm whose clients include the Democratic National Committee and Moveon.org Political Action. Prior to joining Grassroots Campaigns in 2005 he was the Senior Legislative Advocate for the state Public Interest Research Groups (PIRG) and the Director of the State PIRGs’ Higher Education Project, based in Washington DC.
During the 2004 election cycle Frishberg directed communications and political strategy for the New Voters Project, a project of the State PIRGs and The George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management to increase voter turnout among 18-24 year olds in the coming election cycles.
Frishberg is an Advisory Board Member of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) and a consultant to Young Voter Strategies, a project of The George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management. Frishberg is also a founding board member of Young Voter PAC, a political action committee that supports Democratic candidates that effectively engage young voters. Frishberg has been an advisor and consultant to numerous youth and student organizations, including the Youth Vote Coalition, Free The Planet!, The National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness, The Center for Campus Free Speech, and the College Affordability Coalition.
Brooke Lierman
Brooke Lierman is the Young Voter PAC Board Treasurer and a recent graduate from the University of Texas-Austin Law School. Previously she was the Wisconsin state field director for presidential candidate Howard Dean and spent time as an AmeriCorps VISTA with The DREAM Program, a non-profit in Vermont. She graduated from Dartmouth College in 2001 with a bachelor's degree in Social Movements/History, and worked for the Corporation for National Service before becoming a field organizer for Paul Wellstone's 2002 Senate campaign. She grew up in the Washington, D.C. area and started her political experience as volunteer coordinator for her father's, Terry Lierman, Congressional bid in 2000.
Jessy Tolkan
Jessy is a woman on a mission to change democracy in America with young people. This “diva of democracy” has her hands in one of the hottest aspects of politics today, re-igniting the youth vote in America and helping stop global warming. Jessy is currently the Campus Challenge Campaign Director for the Energy Action coalition. In 2004 Jessy helped to achieve a historic 11% increase in youth voter turnout in the US, the largest increase since 18 year-olds got the right to vote with a project funded by the PIRGs called the New Voter’s Project. Her team helped register over 140,000 young voters in Wisconsin. Jessy then was the Campaign Director for the Young Democrats of America in 2005 helping elect a Democratic Governor in Virgini. She's lobbied to help keep college affordable and accessible for all Americans and been a defender of Social Security on behalf of a generation that has the most to lose.
