Erica Payne

On August 23, 2012, Erica Payne debated Peter Schiff on Fox Business where she called Peter a "moron" when he said that consumer demand is not a job creator.

She is the founder of the Agenda Project, a New York‐based hub of public policy discussion and strategy debate for progressive activists from business, media, philanthropy, government, and non‐profit. The Agenda Project's monthly newsletter Practical Progress is read by 10,000 political and philanthropic leaders and is a trusted source of insight on policy and politics.

Before joining the Agenda Project full‐time in 2010, Payne led the Tesseract Group, a boutique consulting firm that provided strategy and communications advice to select public policy and political organizations. In that role, Payne served as a senior strategist for the Roosevelt Institute to envision and build a new public policy think tank for economic and finance sector policy. At the Roosevelt Institute, Payne co‐edited "Make Markets Be Markets: Restoring the Integrity of the US Financial Markets" and produced a major conference by the same name that included George Soros, Elizabeth Warren, Simon Johnson, Lynn Turner and other progressive advocates. Other Tesseract clients included: the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the Howard Gilman Foundation, and the Center for Independent Media among others.

Prior to founding the Agenda Project and the Tesseract Group, Payne co‐founded the Democracy Alliance, a donor collaborative whose partners have invested over $100 million in progressive organizations.

Payne is the author of The Practical Progressive: How to Build a 21st Century Political Movement, which Jonathan Alter of Newsweek called "a blueprint for a progressive conspiracy to help save the country." In 2008, Payne was interviewed by Julian Brookes, the online editorial director of the Progressive Book Club, to discuss her motivations for the book and for the progressive cause, as a whole. Payne stated that her intention was to map out the progressive infrastructure by asking the question: "If you were a chief progressive strategist, what five or six groups would you say are absolutely essential?" Payne continues her work of the Practical Progressive through the Agenda Project.

She is on the Board of Advisors of the Public Diplomacy Collaborative at the Kennedy School at Harvard University. She is also on the Board of Advisors of Health Care for American Now. Payne has a MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania (2000) and a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1991).

Her early career included serving as Deputy National Finance Director for the Democratic National Committee during the 1996 presidential re‐election campaign and as a consultant to a number of campaigns and political organizations. In addition to her public sector work, Payne has held senior marketing positions in the private sector.

Payne grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She has a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1991) and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania (2000). After spending time in Boston, Colorado, Los Angeles, and Washington, Payne moved to New York City in 2001, where she now resides.