Pod Q+A: Biden 2020's Director of Social And Audience Development

Sitting down to record a What Happened After podcast episode with Sarah Galvez was like sitting down with a friend I hadn’t seen in a long time. We talked through the reality of what “day to day” looks like on a campaign, how rapid the rapid fire response moment around the fly in the Vice Presidential debate actually was, but most importantly, how to make sure you feel empowered to GOTV this November.

I’m a big believer, like Sarah, that everyone has a sphere of influence they can be tapping ahead of November. I’m a bigger believer that most times what stops us from reaching out is how little we may believe in ourselves, our voices, or our ability to use the tools at our disposal. Knowing this, I specifically wanted to have a conversation with Sarah Galvez because in her role as Director of Social and Audience Development for Biden 2020’s campaign, her expertise gives all of us a starting point and honestly encouragement.

Sarah grew up in DC, is a first generation American from a Latinx family, and built a career for herself based off a strong work ethic, determination, and an unabashed use of creativity and ingenuity. Galvez shared during the pod recording that she got a job on her first presidential campaign by cold emailing. Fast forward a few years later, she’s leading social and audience development for a presidential campaign this time around.

While nothing happens over night, Galvez encourages others to step into their power as much as possible because it’s the baby steps that will add up to larger goals.

“If you wait for someone to open the door for you or to say it’s okay for you to do it, it’s never going to happen,” notes Galvez. “You need to take ownership of your own space or your own voice.”

Ahead of November that might mean signing up to phone bank or to have that hard conversation with a family member on why this election is so important. Regardless, my hope is that you’ll find nuggets of inspiration in this Q+A with Sarah Galvez that will carry you to November and beyond.

Vivian: What can a day look like for you?

Sarah: Day to day can look a little different every day. It starts very much the same, but then diverges based on what’s going on [that day]. Every morning, I get on calls with our comms team and digital leadership and go through what’s happening for that day — where is the Vice President? where is Senator Harris?. All of that information that we get in the first hour of our day can vastly change what happens the next couple of hours. But [no matter how things shift], the underlying messages is always the same, that no matter what we’re doing on social every day, we’re talking to people about voting, voting registration deadlines [that] are quickly closing…and talking to people about getting involved.

Vivian: Talk to me about the creative behind moments like the VP fly moment…

Sarah: It was a team effort, truly, that came down to a Slack room of people seeing it unfold before our eyes and wondering if it was really going to stay there for that long. Our friends at the DNC jumped on buying the domain, we then spent 2-3 minutes rapid fire shooting through fly puns, and then drilling down on what the money pun was. Still going through our approval process. There’s a line that’s very clear with the Vice President on what’s appropriate to do online and we take that very seriously, so we never try to make fun of people for the sake of doing it, that’s not within his values and that’s very much ingrained in us. So it was how can we take advantage of this moment without adding to the punditry and instead making it a moment to collectively mobilize our audience…without being mean.

Vivian: How can we step into our influence right now?

Sarah: [Just remember,] if you wait for someone to tell you that it’s the appropriate time to talk about voting, it’s never going to come up. You have to be the person in your circles to bring it up and say, “This election is so important - are you going to go vote?”.