Comrades, I am happy to once again run to be your Secretary for DSA Metro Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. I am a co-founder of this chapter who has been here since its very beginning in November 2016, and have served as a leader in any capacity the chapter has seen fit. As Secretary, I’m proud of the the work we’ve done to make sure the chapter has effective communications, membership growth, and more over the year. Through our collaborations in the Communications Committee, we’ve:

• Streamlined the process to request graphics and other communications actions,
• Improved visibility for events via our website and linktree,
• Highlighted our chapter’s successes across the years,
• Developed new officers to take on work such as our newsletters and website,
• Had some of our most successful social media posts in recent memory, particularly on IG,
• Rapidly ramped up membership growth through the hard work of many, including our new Member Engagement Subcommittee

While proud of this work, I think there is even more our chapter can do in the coming year to improve our communications work. I’m very excited to continue this process as Secretary in full collaboration with our Administrative Committee in the coming year! Some major tasks I want to focus on this year include:

• Further developing our comms strategies so we can loop in members who aren’t already engaged or do not check the Discord, through use of phonebanks and textbanks, more regular emails, and listwork to track and develop member involvement,
• Ramping up our ability to produce video social media, particularly on the fledgling chapter Tiktok as well as IG,
• In accordance with the above, developing more officers with which we can effectively distribute our communications work,
• Develop welcome tree ladder templates for use by current and future campaigns, by which we can ensure our campaigns have automations to help reliably keep new volunteers and leaders engaged,
• Increasing capacity for sending emails to members beyond monthly newsletters, as increased frequently of high quality emails would be a net positive for the chapter’s engagement with membership

I hope to receive our chapter’s support for another incredible year in 2026, and I encourage everyone to rank in addition to myself the entirety of our Groundwork slate for Steering Committee, which includes Sarah Callahan for Co-Chair and Mike and Katy for At-Large.

You can read our platform here.

Always in solidarity,
Olivia Merrill