Staff Bios

Michael Lux, CEO

Mike Lux is the co-founder and CEO of Progressive Strategies. Since starting the company, Mike has launched a number of important projects, including American Family Voices, an issue advocacy group that works on pocketbook issues for American families, and the Progressive Donor Network, which works to coordinate a network of individual donors, issue advocacy groups, and top-flight political consultants and strategists.

Mike's projects over the last decade have garnered a considerable amount of media coverage in The Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, National Journal, The New Republic, and Miami Herald, and have provoked numerous attacks by Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and other right-wing media figures, as well as an "exposé" by William Buckley's National Review Magazine. He has been featured on CNN, the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, and has been on many national and regional radio shows. Mike also is a frequent front-page contributor to The Huffington Post.

In addition to those projects, Mike currently serves on the boards of several important organizations, including the Arca Foundation, Americans United for Change, and the Center for Progressive Leadership, the latter two of which he co-founded. He also was a co-founder of Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, Progressive Majority, and Women’s Voices/Women Vote, has served on several other boards throughout his career, and played a role in helping launch the Center for American Progress and Air America.

In the late 1990s, Mike was Senior Vice President for Political Action at People For the American Way (PFAW), and the PFAW Foundation. He oversaw lobbying and legal advocacy, field operations, state and regional offices, voter registration, and get-out-the-vote efforts. He helped launch the PFAW PAC and the PFAW Voters Alliance in 1997. He also was responsible for coalition building with other organizations and interest groups.

Before joining People For the American Way, from January 1993 to mid-1995, Mike served in as a Special Assistant to the President for Public Liaison in the White House. His role on health care and budget issues involved working closely with a wide range of constituency groups including labor, seniors, churches, disability groups, businesses, health care providers, trial lawyers, consumer groups, and farm groups. He organized the first clergy breakfast, the first state opinion leader's days, and the first bill signing ceremony of the Clinton presidency. Mike served in the 1992 campaign war room, the 1993 budget war room and the 1994 health care war room (being one of only two people to serve in all three), and was the person who organized the coalition to fight the school lunch cuts Republicans were pushing in 1995, the first issue on which they were soundly defeated on after taking control of Congress.

Prior to his service at the White House, Mike served as Constituency Director on both the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign and the presidential transition team. In the 1988 cycle, Mike was a member of the senior staff for the Biden and Simon presidential campaigns. In the 1984 cycle, he played a major volunteer role in the Iowa Mondale campaign.

With a diverse breadth of experience, Mike has an extensive background in the consulting, labor and consumer advocacy worlds. He was a partner and co-founder of the Chicago-based political consulting firm, The Strategy Group; served as Executive Vice President, PAC director and chief lobbyist for the Iowa AFL-CIO in the early 1990s; and worked as Executive Director of the Iowa Citizen Action Network.

In July 2007, Mike launched OpenLeft.com with prominent bloggers Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers. OpenLeft.com was a news, analysis, and action website dedicated to building a progressive governing majority in America. OpenLeft.com connected establishment progressive groups with outside activists in conversations and on a variety of projects to further progressive policy.

In November 2008, Mike was named to the Obama-Biden Transition Team. In that role, he served as an advisor to the Office of Public Liaison on working with the progressive community.

In November of 2008, Mike was named to the Obama-Biden Transition Team. In that role, he served as an advisor to the Public Liaison on dealings with the progressive community and has helped shape the office of Public Liaison based on his past experience working on the Clinton-Gore Transition, as well as in the White House.

He is the author of the widely praised book, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be.

Mike Lux is a proud native of Lincoln, Nebraska, where most of his family still lives. He is married to Barbara Laur.

Follow Mike on Twitter @ProgressiveLux.

Carla Ohringer Engle, President

Carla Ohringer Engle serves as the President of Progressive Strategies. Carla has worked in Democratic politics for almost two decades — from the Hill to the Florida recount to the 2010 campaign for health care reform — there is not a political environment her background does not cover. She has specialized in coalition building, working to get new organizations and campaigns up and running, and fundraising and communications strategy. Through her myriad of experiences in and out of the political arena, she has amassed a strong network of political operatives, activists and donors. Some highlights of Carla’s experience include serving as Executive Director of American Family Voices, Director of the Progressive Donor Network, as part of the Renaissance Weekend team, and as part of the Democratic National Committee’s finance team during the 2000 election as the Director of the Federal Victory Fund and as a Regional Finance Director, working in and overseeing activities in a number of key states. Throughout the 1990s she served in various leadership roles for a number of Democratic U.S. House and Senate campaigns.

Carla lives with her husband Mitch, owner of Lynn Jewelers, in the D.C. suburbs.

Alesa Mackool is the Online Strategy Director and Executive Assistant at Progressive Strategies. She specializes in writing, research and online communications. Alesa also oversees the intern program and coordinates CEO Mike Lux’s travel and schedule.

Prior to joining Progressive Strategies, Alesa worked as the Deputy New Media Director for Admiral Joe Sestak’s 2010 Senate campaign. She managed multimedia production and website design, and served as the primary campaign blogger.

Alesa has worked as an opposition researcher, and interned in the U.S. House Rules Committee and other congressional offices. She is a Michigan native and studied Journalism and Political Science at Michigan State University. She is chair of the WIN (Women's Information Network) Campaign Network.

Please direct press requests to Alesa via .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) with the word "PRESS" in the subject line or by calling 202-628-7771.