LEADERSHIP

  • Andy served as Co-Director of Senator Edward M. Kennedy's 1976 Massachusetts Senate reelection campaign and again worked with Senator Kennedy as Director of Issues and Media for his 1980 Presidential campaign. In 2008 working with Rock the Vote, he conceived and organized the largest youth voter registration drive to date, optimizing new online platforms to register 2.6 million first time voters principally between the ages of 18 and 35. In 2012 working with The Culture Project, Karsch produced and co-wrote the critically acclaimed Blueprint For Accountability, which was presented at the NYU Skirball Center and broadcast live online around the world by FORA. Directly following the 2016 election, Andy worked to reconfigure the board of Run For America, helping to find people in the private sector to run for office.Andy continues to consult for numerous foundations, organizations and institutions while serving as a Senior Advisor to the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial.

    Andy’s film producing credits include Academy Award-nominated The Prince of Tides, The Emperor’s Club, Princess Caraboo, The Rachel Papers, Conviction, and the 2012 Academy Award-nominated Moneyball. Andy was executive producer on the film Moynihan, released in 2018. He attended The American Film Institute Center for Advanced Film Studies, where, as a Conservatory Fellow, he produced the highly acclaimed Nights at O’Rear's, which premiered at The New York Film Festival in 1981. He subsequently founded Longfellow Pictures while working as both a producer and executive with United Artists from 1985 to 1994. He left United Artists to run companies and continue producing under his Longfellow Pictures banner first with William Randolph Hearst III and then Sidney Kimmel. In 2010, Andy founded the company Insurgent Media, which has produced several documentaries including the SXSW award-winning Beware of Mr. Baker; Blank City, about underground film, music and art in 1970s New York; the Emmy nominated American Masters Woody Allen: A Documentary; PBS' Before the Spring, After The Fall; and the Netflix Original Mission Blue. He also executive produced the Berlin Film Festival Cinema Fairbindet prize-winning film Art/Violence.

  • Francis Smith is President of a Cambridge, Massachusetts consulting firm specializing in election and non-profit law, political advocacy and campaigns and policy work. A graduate of Georgetown University and Boston College Law School, he is member of the Massachusetts Bar. A veteran of a number of political campaigns including two Presidential and a US Senate race, he now writes a monthly newsletter on American politics. He serves on a number of non governmental organization boards. His current work includes as the political director of the Democracy Alliance an organization of over 100 Democratic donors and institutions and as co-founder of Committee on States, a state donor network. He also serves as Executive Director of the Streisand Foundation.