Where We Are & Where We’re Going
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Zach Friend is an author and a public policy and communications expert who has worked for Barack Obama and John Kerry’s presidential campaigns, the White House Council of Economic Advisers, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Democratic National Committee. He’s been featured on and quoted by CNN, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, Fox News, and many others.
In this episode, Zach and host Spencer Critchley talk about not just what’s happening now, but what it all means for where politics is going.
About Zach Friend
Zach Friend is an author and a public policy and communications expert who has worked for Barack Obama and John Kerry’s presidential campaigns, the White House Council of Economic Advisers, the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives and the Democratic National Committee. He is a frequent guest on national television programs and has written for the Huffington Post and Business Insider. He’s been featured on and quoted by CNN, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, Fox News, MSNBC, CBSN, National Public Radio, the LA Times, the New York Times, Politico and others.
For nearly a decade, Zach was the Press Information Officer and a Crime Analyst for the Santa Cruz, California Police Department, acting as the department’s spokesman and analyzing crime statistics to help design more effective community-focused crime prevention strategies.
With Obama for America, Zach was a battleground state press secretary and on-the-record state spokesman handling planning, writing and media relations for television, print and radio. For appearances and interviews, he staffed and briefed Barack Obama, Joe Biden and other campaign principals and surrogates.
Turner Publishing published his book On Message: How a Compelling Narrative Will Make Your Organization Succeed. On Message became an Amazon.com best seller in the Marketing category and won a prestigious Axiom Business Book Award in the Networking/Communication Skills category. He has led numerous trainings and conferences based on lessons from the book.
Zach was elected to the Santa Cruz County (California) Board of Supervisors, representing the Second District, in 2012 and re-elected in 2016 and 2020. The beautiful and diverse Second District, which is bordered by the Monterey Bay, the Pajaro River and the Santa Cruz Mountains, includes coastal communities and some of the most productive agricultural land in the country. In 2017, Zach was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to the California Film Commission and currently serves on that commission.