30 CityAndStateNY.com
July 12, 2021
elected into office to best represent her community.
first one up in the morning and last one to go to bed at night.”
FRANCESCA HUTTLE
ADAM KATZ
PRINCIPAL
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS
Francesca Huttle hails from a long line of politicians – her father was a mayor, her mother a state legislator – but behind-the-scenes work and digging into the nitty-gritty of policymaking is more her speed. “I found myself really interested in the back scenes of figuring out campaign strategies, which really led me into public affairs,” she says. “I like that the one constant in my days is really digging into data to make sure we’re achieving messages.” Before joining Kivvit, Huttle gained experience working as a communications intern for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential run. She started out at Kivvit as a public affairs trainee in 2017, and worked her way from associate to senior associate. In her current role as principal, she specializes in campaign management, grassroots advocacy, public affairs and digital campaigns. Engaged with a variety of clients across the labor, corporate and nonprofit sectors, Huttle is laser-focused on fulfilling her client’s campaigns through strategic messaging and precise digital targeting. While doing lots of digital campaigning, Huttle helped draft a white paper during the earliest days of the coronavirus pandemic that showed just how heavily people rely on social media and streaming services to
TEACH COALITION
Jason Kaplan is a senior vice president at SKDK.
receive information. “Our sector really specializes in digital campaigns, and so it was all about communicating in the best way possible in the pandemic, and I’m proud to say that it’s really thrived,” she says. “More of our traditional clients have tried to integrate our digital strategies after this year and it’s great to be a part of that.”
JASON KAPLAN SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT SKDK Some people get their start in politics by phone-banking or knocking on doors. For Jason Kaplan, it was driving U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer around the nation’s capital. After interning for Schumer’s office in high school, a young Kaplan served as an assistant to the Senate minority leader before becoming his right-hand man and press secretary for more than three years. “People think of politics as this big thing that’s national and monumental, and it’s not,” he says. “Politics is very much local, and being responsible for running Schumer’s 62-county tour really showed
me that.” After graduating from Schumer school, Kaplan moved back home to work at SKDK, where as vice president he worked on issues ranging from congestion pricing to community care. Currently, as senior vice president, he’s focused on parole reform, among other issues. Throughout the past year, he has also collaborated with Mount Sinai Health System to run its crisis support efforts during the coronavirus pandemic. Before the pandemic, Kaplan says he could be found taking conference calls from his makeshift office – the Amtrak train bathroom. Despite the ongoing challenges of remote work, he says his interactions with clients have only improved. “My free time is between 5:30 and 7:30 a.m., where I catch up on the news before I talk to any of my clients,” he says. “Chuck instilled this in me. If you want to be successful, you have to be the
As a liaison to departments of education across multiple states with a focus on New York, Adam Katz has been busier than ever in the fight to keep education afloat during the coronavirus pandemic. “Scheduling-wise, I had to figure out what the state really needed and to keep things as simple as possible in a time of crisis,” he says. “ I try to make every government program as turnkey as possible for the schools. (They) know when they call me, I’m going to solve their problems.” Earlier in his career, as a research assistant at the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy, Katz advised on economic development, housing, transit and land use, acquiring a deep understanding of how municipalities operate. He also published a book, and founded a real estate advisory firm in between serving as treasurer on the board of directors at an economic development nonprofit in Brooklyn. Currently at Teach Coalition, Katz finds himself at the intersection of consulting and managing. When he’s
Kaplan got his start driving Chuck Schumer around the nation’s capital.
KIVVIT; SKDK; MICHAEL N. MEYER; SUBMITTED; ASSEMBLY; DON POLLARD
KIVVIT