Melissa Grant
President
Melissa has co-run three Democratic headquarters in Los Angeles since 2012. As Chair and Co-manager of the Westside Democratic HQ, she was instrumental in flipping 7 California Congressional districts in 2018. In 2019, she co-founded the Grassroots Democrats HQ and began serving as its President. Melissa has served 6 terms as a Delegate to the California Democratic Party. She served as President of the Pacific Palisades Democratic Club for 7 years and is currently its Vice President for Issues and Endorsements. She was also appointed by Mayor Karen Bass to serve on the Los Angeles City Human Relations Commission. To earn her living, Melissa is a partner of Capstone Law APC and a class action plaintiff’s attorney, fighting for the rights of workers and consumers.
Tamara Melzer Levenson
Executive Director
After the 2016 Presidential election, Tamara served for 3 years as Code Blue’s National Phone Bank Coordinator, where she created a remote phone bank system that trained and empowered thousands of volunteers. After working on over 50 elections nationally, she was instrumental in flipping 7 Congressional seats in California when she served as the 2018 Co-Manager and Field Director for the Westside Democratic Headquarters. In 2019, Tamara co-founded the Grassroots Democrats HQ and began serving as our Executive Director. Tamara is an appointed Delegate to the California Democratic Party (CDP) and a member of several Democratic club boards. Her formal training before her political career is in social work and nonprofit management.
Andre Charles
Chief Financial Officer
Andre Charles is a political consultant with three decades of campaign experience. He has worked to elect candidates for City Council, School Board, Board of Supervisors, Special Districts, State Assembly, State Senate and Congress, and consulted for independent expenditure campaigns, local land use measures, school bonds, transportation bonds and dedicated sales taxes across the state. Currently, Charles serves as the Political & Data Director for Activate America, a federal Super PAC that helped keep control of the U.S. Senate in 2022 by winning seats in Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania and contributed to US Senate wins in Arizona, Colorado and Georgia in previous cycles. Through Activate, Charles also took a lead role in California’s Proposition 50 Campaign.
Ingrid Van Eckert
Vice President
Ingrid is a long time Democratic activist and volunteer with experience working on dozens of campaigns. Ingrid serves as a liaison for the HQ in the broader grassroots community and assists in fundraising, donor relations, voter mobilization, and event coordination. She currently also serves as the Vice President of the West LA Democratic Club.
Davis Han
Senior Strategist
Davis is a co-founder of Grassroots Democrats HQ and served as our Field Director for the 2019-2020 election cycle. He has worked on over 40 local, state, and federal campaigns nationwide. In 2022, he managed campaigns for LA County Supervisor and California State Senate, and also worked as a consultant for various successful city council campaigns, advising on field, communications, direct mail, and fundraising. Davis is also a former California State Senate staffer, California Democratic Party delegate, and Vice President of Westside Young Dems. He has a B.A. in political science and public policy from the University of Southern California.
Mana Shooshtari
Executive Strategist
Mana joined the HQ as a fellow in 2020 and worked her way up the ladder, eventually becoming the Field and Communications Director for the 2021-22 Election Cycle, where the HQ contacted over 11 million voters across the country. She started organizing as a high school student in Stockton, CA on issues surrounding gun violence prevention and intersectional feminism. She now serves as a Congressional staffer, an elected California Democratic Party Delegate, Vice President for the Young Democrats of San Joaquin, and Central Valley Regional Chair of the Iranian American Democrats of California. She graduated with a B.A. in Political Science from San José State University in 2022.
Justyn Kelly
Organizing Director
Justyn Kelly began organizing in 2022 as a Democracy Summer Fellow with the Mike Levin Campaign in CA-49. He went on to work full time as a Deputy Field Director in the Orange County region of CA-49 through the 2022 midterms—helping to defend one the of the most competitive House races in the country. As our full-time Youth Vote Coordinator for the 2024 election, Justyn helped oversee more than 650,000 young voter contacts and the training of 275 student organizers. He is currently attending the University of Southern California, pursuing a B.A. in political economy.
Daniela Mayock
Digital Director
Daniela volunteered with GDHQ for Prop 50 to knock on doors in West LA and high-traffic canvass on the UCLA campus. She loved the incredible enthusiasm and impact of the GDHQ, and quickly went from volunteer to contractor to full-time staff.
Daniela studied film and digital media at UCLA. She worked in social video production at The Walt Disney Company and then directed social media livestreams for major sports events including the Super Bowl and World Cup. She went back to UCLA for her MBA, and worked in digital media and project management for startups. After volunteering on campaigns for many years in her free-time, she fully pivoted into politics as a Harris-Walz campus organizer in Pennsylvania. She was a Blueline Fellow in 2024 and trained with Arena, New Politics, and the DNC. She is thrilled to join GDHQ as Digital Director!
Barry Rosenbaum
Senior Editor
Barry retired from the Santa Monica City Attorney’s Office in 2016, having served as an advisor to the City Council/City Commissions and as an appellate litigator for over thirty years. He is currently a Santa Monica Recreation and Parks Commissioner and weekly blog writer. He started volunteering six weeks after retiring and has worked in some capacity with the HQ ever since, including as our Volinteer Coordinator for the 2019-20 election cycle. He is currently GDHQ’s Senior Editor reviewing external communications, a Principal Texting Facilitator for active campaigns, and a Board member. He graduated with a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin in 1980 and a J.D. from U.C.L.A. in 1984.
Andy Linden
Recruitment Coordinator
After canvassing in the Midwest for the 2016 election, Andy was a volunteer trainer during the 2018 midterms at the Westside Democratic HQ. In 2020, Andy joined the Grassroots Democrats HQ as the Recruitment Coordinator, shepherding the HQ’s ability to recruit and retain volunteers. Andy is also an expert phone banking and text banking trainer. He is currently faculty at the California State University, Northridge, where he teaches the history/philosophy of physical culture and researches the intersections of sport and politics.
Pratyush Mallick
Technology Coordinator
Since high school, Pratyush has worked both volunteer and staff roles on several political and issue advocacy campaigns, primarily in his home state of Texas. In 2020, he was elected as one of the youngest National Delegates at the Democratic National Convention, where he helped lead conversations on COVID relief, Universal Basic Income, and Healthcare. Currently, he is a junior at Harvard College pursuing a joint concentration in Government and Computer Science.
Pamela "Kelly" McAfee
Distributive Organizer & Community Liaison
What happens when you cross an IT professional, call center technical assistant, and a radio DJ? Mix it with the passion of a activist, the voice of an advocate, and the heart of a Democrat. Pamela knows that promise of the United States is something we all must work for. From judge at the polls of North Texas, to staging location director in North Carolina, she was hooked. It wasn’t until the pandemic in 2020 that allowed Pam to really use her skills. Pam’s mobility issues were a hindrance to participating fully, but she was always at home online. A natural in zoom, her tech support skills and training background allowed her to help activists transition from in person to virtual organizing. She is very happy to have found a home within the Grassroots Dems HQ community.
Jaidyn McKinnie
Operations Manager
After graduating summa cum laude from UCLA with a major in Political Science and minor in History and Global Studies in June 2026, Jaidyn became the full time Operations Manager at the Grassroots Democrats. Originally from Corona, California, she began working with the HQ in fall 2023 as a student canvasser for Will Rollins in CA-41. She quickly grew to love speaking with diverse constituencies and advocating for the progressive causes she championed, later transitioning into a full-time Field Organizer during the 2024 election. She was soon uplifted as our primary bus captain in partnership with the Harris-Walz campaign, frequently traveling to Nevada and Arizona to train volunteers and coordinate field operations, which also helped elect Senators Jackie Rosen and Ruben Gallego. Jaidyn completed a policy internship in Washington, D.C. with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
Robert Jimenez
Finance Manager
Robert started getting involved in politics during high school in Riverside, CA. Robert began his grassroots organizing efforts by working to implement voter registration education into his high school district. He has since planned and executed rallies in support of immigrant rights, gun violence prevention and climate change reform. Since moving to LA, Robert has worked on both local and congressional campaigns to ensure that underrepresented communities are advocated for and represented adequately in government. He has a B.A. in Political Science and International Development Studies from UCLA.
Luke Susswood
Youth Vote Coordinator
Luke Susswood is a student at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and full-time staff member at Grassroots Democrats HQ. Originally from Portland, OR he began his political organizing work as a high schooler working on a campaign in his home district in OR-3. He found the Grassroots Democrats HQ a week after moving to Los Angeles for college while looking to get involved in the fight for fair maps during Prop 50. Since then he has gone on to lead three of our flagship youth programs: the nationwide Organize for Democracy program, our Paid Canvassing programming, and our College Campus Program.
Daniela Sarabia
Latino Constituency Coordinator
Daniela is a sophomore at UCLA. After getting involved with Grassroots Democrats through our paid campus and canvassing programs through George Whitesides for Congress in CA-27. She continued her work with us through Proposition 50 working from the UCLA campus and our Brentwood office before she came on in a part time role as the Latino Constituency Coordinator.
Lily Howes
Fellowship Coordinator
Lily first became involved in politics when she joined High School Democrats of America her freshman year of high school. She started working with the HQ in 2023 as a fellow, and fell in love with organizing after successfully working to enshrine abortion rights in Ohio. During the 2024 election, Lily worked as a Distributive Organizer and Assistant to the Fellowship Program. She is an incoming high school senior in Columbus, Ohio and outside of her political activism, Lily is a Co-Editor of her school’s newspaper, conducts affordable housing research, and plays the cello in a variety of ensembles.
Leah Fischer
Youth Program Coordinator
Leah, an incoming freshman at Stanford University, began working on campaigns as a fellow with the GDHQ in December of 2023. Since then, she has been a member of three Organize for Democracy cohorts, volunteered on over 15 campaigns with the HQ, and served as an intern on the Swalwell for Governor campaign. Leah has previously interned in the office of Congressman Brad Sherman in Sherman Oaks. Outside of her work in politics, she collaborates with Dr. Bruce I. Sacerdote on research analyzing Congressional stock trading performance over time and was the editor-in-chief of her school’s academic journal.
Sidney Stern
Research Associate
Sidney started her political career when she was eight as a genocide and mass atrocities prevention activist. She moved into the campaign arena in high school, volunteering for campaigns in the 2020 Election. She joined the HQ as a fellow in early 2022, eventually progressing into a part-time organizer and Assist to the Fellowship. In her free time, she serves as a researcher for local campaigns and as a writer for her school’s newspaper. Currently she is a freshman at American University studying Political Science and Journalism.