We were lucky to catch up with Alex Vanden Heuvel recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alex, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
I had a lifelong goal of pursuing a career in political journalism. I was the Editor-in-Chief of my school newspaper and went to the University of Georgia with the intent of going into its best-in-class journalism program. In the fall of 2015, I started my freshman year and quickly began working as a paid reporter for The Red & Black, UGA’s independently-operated student newspaper. I also was a news anchor for WUOG-FM, the student-run radio station.
I always held a fairly balanced view about political affairs – I was told that was my job as a news reporter. The events I covered and my personal experiences during that time period changed that.
Covering the first Donald Trump rally to happen in Georgia, at the World Congress Center. At this event, I was threatened with violence and the female reporter I was working with was sexually harassed. It was the first time I had ever felt unsafe doing my job.
Covering the RNC live on location in Cleveland, I watched with my own eyes as my family’s historical political party crowned a person who proudly stood for racist, nonsensical policies that would threaten the foundational order that our world was built upon.
On the night of the 2016 General Election, I was the anchor reporting on WUOG. I called Trump’s victory while also working a student-led Election Night event. I was numb, fearful of the future, and shared the genuine pain that so many of my peers expressed.
I was not willing to be a neutral reporter passively documenting the horrors of a political party and administration enacting policies that inflicted harm on millions of people. I quit most of the activities that I was involved in at the time, and I researched how I could become involved in politics professionally.
I quickly realized how many transferable skills I had for this kind of work, and I was given my first paid political job in the Summer of 2017. I’m here seven years later running a political consulting firm with my spouse – it was our shared goal to create and operate this business.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
My spouse and I run FTR Strategies, a left-aligned political management firm. We are a one-stop shop for anything a campaign needs. From creating a start-to-finish execution strategy, creating a brand identity, managing staff or volunteers, completing financial compliance requirements, running a campaign budget, operating GOTV efforts, and more – we have the experience and skill set to do it all.
There’s a lot of folks in our industry who are only interested in races that they view as being easy wins, and they take a “my way or the highway” approach to dealing with candidates and their loved ones. We push back against that by operating with a community-first mindset and creating a bespoke plan that is unique to the needs of each campaign. We’re interested in making Georgia, and the communities that we live/work/play in, better for everyone. We’re not here to parachute in and leave for the next shiny thing.
This year is our first full calendar year as a business, and we have learned so much. We are so thankful for the ways that we’ve grown. People think that our work must be extremely cyclical to Presidential Election years, and that isn’t true. In Georgia, municipal elections take place in odd-numbered years. That is the case for many states. We’re already talking to people about their plans in 2025, 2026, and 2027.
We believe that everyone in America should feel empowered to run for office at least once in their lifetime – if that were the case, our elected officials would be much more representative of the people in terms of age, race, occupational background, life experiences, and every other dimension. We’re always happy to talk with people about their options and interests, and we hope you’ll reach out to learn more about how you can run for office!
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
1. A strong sense of empathy is vital in any work that you do.
In our line of work, there are very real consequences to our success or failure. That’s the case for most kinds of work that small businesses do. I learned early on, and am still trying to perfect, the art of listening and understanding before I take action. Especially in a field like political campaigning, where your success relies on the ways that thousands of people in a community perceive your work, understanding why those people feel the way that they do is important.
I’ll pass on a piece of advice that my spouse, Mo, gave to me. I find it enormously helpful to remember.
“Anytime you think you understand the whole picture, take a second and think again because there is always another question to ask.”
2. Be honest and communicate to a fault.
A lot of the less great people in the political industry get away with overcharging for basic work because we aren’t taught very much in school about how the political system works. I have many clients or friends who were taken advantage of in this way because those other folks like to hand-wave around what they’re doing to obscure the process, which allows them to get away with what they do. Our business has grown this quickly purely because of word-of-mouth referrals from our clients, and also because the friends and connections of candidates see the high quality of work we do. Being honest pays.
My advice in this area is to spread the love you have for what you do. I am an educator at heart – if I wasn’t doing political consulting and if I hadn’t stayed in the journalism industry, I would have gone into political science academia as my third career option. I love explaining to clients and their loved ones why I make the decisions I make, and I also enjoy sharing all of the esoteric facts I’ve learned from the people who taught me how to do this work. If you take time to educate the people you work around, it will underscore your honesty while also making your passion for your work clear.
3. Learn from your mistakes, but don’t dwell on them.
As I mentioned previously, the consequences that our work has on the communities we work in can be relatively heavy. It’s easy to beat yourself up when something doesn’t go the way you hoped, especially when the folks who won pass policies that hurt people you care about. The first thing to know is the outcome of most events, including the mistakes you make, happens due to a universe of different factors within and outside of your control. Almost nothing can be entirely your fault.
When you are responsible for mistakes, make sure you learn from them. Figure out how to productively move forward, take accountability, and do better next time. Most of the time you didn’t choose to make a mistake, but you can choose how to process that and act moving forward.
How can folks who want to work with you connect?
At FTR Strategies, we’re always looking to expand our contact book. We have a constant need for people with all kinds of different skills. Political campaigns need everything – event planning, marketing, musical performances, catering, photography, design work, merchandising, and more.
We are looking for people who believe in the candidates we work for, and who carry a true passion for doing high-quality work.
Even if you offer a service I didn’t list, our needs expand far beyond that. If you’re interested, reach out to Mo and me at ftrpoliticalstrategies@gmail.com – we are looking forward to hearing from you!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ftrstrategies.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ftrpolitical/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ftrstrategies/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ftr-strategies/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/FtrPolitical
Image Credits
Portrait by Randi Curling – Randi Curling Photography
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
