PERSON: Ben Wikler
Employer
Democratic Party of Wisconsin
Position
Chair
Biography
Benjamin McDonald Wikler (born February 3, 1981) is an American political organizer who has been the chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin since July 2019. A former senior advisor at MoveOn, Nancy Pelosi called him a “preeminent state party chair.”
Wikler grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, where he cofounded The Yellow Press, a student-run newspaper at Madison West High School. While a student there, he won election to the student Senate and launched Students United in Defense of Schools with Peter Koechley to demand increased school funding and succeeded in allowing students to elect a representative to the Madison School Board. He also organized protests against granting Coca-Cola exclusive access to Madison schools. During high school he worked for Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Ed Garvey and on the first congressional campaign of now-Senator Tammy Baldwin.
In 1999, he began attending Harvard University, where he studied economics. While a student there, he cofounded the Student Global AIDS Campaign (SGAC) and the Harvard AIDS Coalition. He represented the SGAC at the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on AIDS in New York City, the UN World Youth Forum in Senegal, and the International AIDS Conference in Barcelona. He also worked for economist Jeffrey Sachs and interned for U.S. Senator Russ Feingold. He was editor-in-chief of the Harvard Review of Philosophy and contributed to The Onion.
While at Harvard, he joined TeamFranken, a group of students who assisted Al Franken in writing his book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Wikler took a term off to help Franken “through every step of the process” of writing the book. “When I was staying with the Frankens , we’d get up around 10 or 11 and then work for 14 or 15 hours,” he told an interviewer. “We’d stop only for meals and a little break before dinner. It was exhausting, but it was also exhilarating, because he’s so funny. We were constantly cracking up.”
Wikler graduated cum laude in 2003 with a degree in economics.
>> Wikipedia
Wikler grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, where he cofounded The Yellow Press, a student-run newspaper at Madison West High School. While a student there, he won election to the student Senate and launched Students United in Defense of Schools with Peter Koechley to demand increased school funding and succeeded in allowing students to elect a representative to the Madison School Board. He also organized protests against granting Coca-Cola exclusive access to Madison schools. During high school he worked for Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Ed Garvey and on the first congressional campaign of now-Senator Tammy Baldwin.
In 1999, he began attending Harvard University, where he studied economics. While a student there, he cofounded the Student Global AIDS Campaign (SGAC) and the Harvard AIDS Coalition. He represented the SGAC at the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on AIDS in New York City, the UN World Youth Forum in Senegal, and the International AIDS Conference in Barcelona. He also worked for economist Jeffrey Sachs and interned for U.S. Senator Russ Feingold. He was editor-in-chief of the Harvard Review of Philosophy and contributed to The Onion.
While at Harvard, he joined TeamFranken, a group of students who assisted Al Franken in writing his book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Wikler took a term off to help Franken “through every step of the process” of writing the book. “When I was staying with the Frankens , we’d get up around 10 or 11 and then work for 14 or 15 hours,” he told an interviewer. “We’d stop only for meals and a little break before dinner. It was exhausting, but it was also exhilarating, because he’s so funny. We were constantly cracking up.”
Wikler graduated cum laude in 2003 with a degree in economics.
>> Wikipedia
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