BOSTON — The Ed Markey for U.S. Senate Campaign announced today that it is enhancing its leadership team with the addition of Emma Friend as the Director of Distributed Campaigning. The Director of Distributed Campaigning is responsible for integrating the values and tactics of digital campaigning into organizing, fundraising and communications efforts, including relational organizing.

“We are delighted to welcome Emma Friend to the senior leadership team of the Markey for U.S. Senate Campaign,” said Campaign Manager John Walsh. “Emma’s role, Director of Distributed Campaigning, is new, but one that embodies the values at the heart of Senator Markey’s campaign—investment at the grassroots level, belief in the power of people as equal partners in this movement, and alliance with progressives and progressive organizations across America. It builds on the campaign’s aggressive commitment to an innovative relational organizing model.”

Prior to joining the Markey campaign, Emma led the supporter-organized events program for the Elizabeth Warren for President campaign, applying innovative tactics to build out large teams of supporters across the country to organize volunteer opportunities within their own communities. Following that, Emma triggered the first viral fundraising moment of the Markey campaign with a passionate expression of her support on social media. Her words garnered more than 55,000 likes and almost 10,000 retweets in two days. It yielded 1,953 grassroots small dollar donors, averaging $29 and totaling over $57,000.

“I am very excited to be joining Team Markey. With the high level of enthusiasm for Senator Markey from progressives across the country, strengthening our ability to collaborate further with the national and progressive organizations that have endorsed him, while expanding our national volunteer base, are critical to our goal of re-electing the co-author of the Green New Deal,” said Friend.

Her previous campaign experience includes work with former State Senator Barbara L’Italien and as a College Organizing Intern for Bernie Sanders for President in 2016.

Emma lives in Jamaica Plain. She is a graduate of Emerson College with a bachelor’s degree in Political Communication: Leadership, Politics and Social Advocacy.

This commitment to person-to-person campaigning was instrumental in the resounding success of the campaign to date as Senator Markey won an overwhelming 70 percent of committed delegates elected at almost 500 local caucuses earlier this year. This friend-to-friend, neighbor-to-neighbor effort is also credited with the astounding level of response to the campaign’s call for nomination signatures that yielded over 21,000 requests from grassroots supporters and their networks all across Massachusetts.

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