Drew Bergerson’s day job is to research, teach, and write about modern German history. In his free time, he helped create the Community School Foundation, a nonprofit to support his favorite alternate independent school, CS#1elementary. At OurRev, he designed the Research & Endorsement process, and served as the OurRev Field Leader for the statewide ballot initiatives on Medicaid Expansion. He looks forward to working on the next initiative VOTE 2022.
Upon returning from 6 years in the Peace Corps in 2018, Deborah worked on the 2018 campaigns in Florida for Andrew Gillum and Amendment 4 (Voting Rights for Returning Felons). She served as Volunteer Coordinator with Progressive Sarasota. In Kansas City, she has previously served as Board Secretary for ORKC and was a Text Training Lead on GOTV for Amendment 2. She served as a notary on the signature-gathering team for Medicaid Expansion. She now recognizes that democracy is not a spectator sport, considers the Revolution to be a decades-long project and is in it for the long haul.
Essence Jewel is an urban planning and design student at UMKC. She studied the impact of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and poverty on child development and how to change policy to improve life outcomes. In her free time, she volunteered for Bernie Sanders’ 2020 election as a student organizer and victory captain where she primarily did activist training. During and after working for the Bernie Sanders campaign, she partnered with Winnetonka High School to attempt to bring Eco-Schools initiatives to her former district to foster feelings of community for students, teachers, and staff.
Susan is a Spanish teacher in the Liberty Public School district and lives up north in Kansas City. Education, health care and anti-racism are her focused areas of activism.
After many regrets of not personally doing more for the 2016 Bernie campaign, Susan was determined to make a difference in 2020. She joined ORKC in 2019 and participated in local Bernie events, debate watch parties, phonebanking, and making buttons. She joined the effort to get Medicaid Expansion in Missouri on the ballot by collecting more than 600 signatures and by becoming a notary to help notarize petitions. She currently serves as the newly created and evolving role of Activist Liaison. If you have an initiative or a campaign you think ORKC should be involved with, contact Susan to bring it to the attention of the Board.