About Watershed / Who We Are

An experienced online fundraising, advocacy, and marketing consultant, speaker, and author, Madeline has led internet strategies for many organizations, including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, CREDO, The Nation, Ocean Conservancy, Amnesty International USA, the Campaign to Defend the Constitution, Earthjustice, Human Rights Campaign, the Humane Society of the United States, ACORN, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and CARE.

Until mid-2006 Madeline was the President and Creative Director of Donordigital, a full-service online agency which helps nonprofit organizations, campaigns, and socially responsible businesses use the Internet to build their constituencies and achieve their goals.

Madeline is a frequent speaker and writer in fundraising, advocacy, and technology conferences and publications across the country. She is a trainer and adviser to the New Organizing Institute, and co-convenes Web of Change, an international annual gathering that connects global leaders in online communications, technology, and activism who are actively building a better world. She is the author of The Mercifully Brief, Real World Guide to Raising Thousands (If Not Tens of Thousands) of Dollars with E-mail, published by Emerson and Church. You can get your copy here.

Madeline has been raising money, organizing, and communicating for organizations and causes for 20 years, not counting her second-grade campaign for George McGovern. She served as director of individual giving at Health Access, a statewide health advocacy organization in California, and as Public Information Officer for the Alameda County Health Department (Berkeley, Oakland). Madeline was the executive director of Access to Software for All People (ASAP), a youth-run Web development business run as a non-profit social enterprise.

Madeline holds a Masters of Social Work from San Francisco State University. She lives in Berkeley with her husband, Scott Connolly, and two rescued greyhounds, Daisy and Scout. Together, they run a pretty fun and funky inn at the end of the world on Mendocino’s north coast.

Watershed’s Executive Vice President Jenn Smith previously served as Vice President of Donordigital and led the strategic work and campaign development for organizations such as UNHCR, CARE, The Humane Society of the United States, Girl Scouts of the United States and The Human Rights Campaign. Jenn’s reputation has been built around delivering top-notch client service, thoughtful and effective strategy, and spectacular results for her clients and their programs.

Prior to her work in the world of online fundraising and advocacy, Jenn spent over 9 years in the non-profit sector where she worked in both public policy and program development, and led membership and individual giving programs. Her intimate knowledge of the challenges and opportunities facing non-profits is key to her ability to understand her clients’ needs and help them achieve their goals online. When she’s not staying awake at night planning the next big campaign (sadly, this is true) she’s cooking up a storm, making homemade sourdough bread, and drooling over beautiful produce at her local farmer’s market. (Yes – she’s yet another Watershed foodie). Her dream client would be an organization working on building local and sustainable food communities – is that you? E-mail Jenn here if you are interested in working with us!

After over thirteen years in the nonprofit world doing everything from health education to youth leadership development to dealing with dead servers and clogged sinks, he is quite happy to manage offices and do things with numbers.  He is also especially fond of binder clips and tiny post-its. 

Outside the wild world o’ work, Todd lives with a ferocious orange cat Loki.  He also writes science fiction, agonizes over his apartment’s motif, and rides his bike.  Yes, it has gears.  Yes, it has brakes.  And yes, he wears a helmet.  He’s hardcore like that. 

Originally from West-By-God-Virginia, Todd attended the state’s best university (take that, Wesleyan) before moving north to Massachusetts.  It turned out, however, that Todd did not care for living in a state with a name that was so hard to spell, so he moved to California a decade ago.  His mother is still upset about this, and no, she will not learn to live with it.  He has promised his aforementioned mother to return for retirement, but she is still not happy. 

Heather is a Senior Account Executive who arrived at Watershed after supervising projects on civil liberties and technology for the Consumer Federation of California. She’s since worked with a slew of kickass groups at Watershed, including CREDO Action, The Nation and The Humane Society of the United States.

She graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Global Studies from UC Santa Barbara, where she plugged into the community media scene as Associate News Director for KCSB-FM. Progressive politics are in her genes, but her path to the world of fundraising and advocacy was solidified by an eye-opening semester in DC behind enemy lines, being goaded (unsuccessfully) by CATO and the Heritage Foundation to stop worrying and love the free market.

Heather is a cellist, cyclist, amateur urban farmer (ask about her chickens!), compulsive public radio podcast listener, and an occasional contributor to the blog Feministing. She does yoga and has a predilection for gourmet local cuisine and overpriced coffee, thus fulfilling her contractual obligation as a resident of San Francisco (see Stuff White People Like numbers 1, 15, 91). She’s Watershed’s canary in a coal mine, which might explain why she sometimes has an uncontrollable urge to shout at the sight of birds and other wildlife in the Financial District.

Mark, Watershed’s Research & Data Director (and resident rabid member of the notorious Oakland A’s fan base), grew up as an Air Force brat, splitting time between Nebraska, Virginia, and Florida. After receiving his Bachelor’s degree in Sociology at a sleepy state college on the banks of the Rappahannock River, he traveled through Europe, Africa, Asia, and Central America, rooting for the Baltimore Orioles all the way.

Long before coming to Watershed, Mark had tours of duty with various nonprofits and healthcare organizations including the California HealthCare Foundation, Kaiser Permanente, the Center for Applied Local Research, and Access to Software for All People, where he managed the data business (with Madeline no less!). He recently earned a Certificate in Non-Profit Management at a sleepy continuing education school on the banks of the San Francisco Bay.

Mark is a jack of all sports and master of none, regularly playing in casual leagues of all types, including soccer, softball, basketball, and baseball. Let him know what games you play, especially if it’s one he’s hoping to branch into – like rugby or lacrosse, (where constantly running into other people isn’t frowned upon.)

The year was 2009, the location was the thriving metropolis of San Francisco. And on that cold November day, out from the depths of the city emerged a web developer. He would be the one chosen… to become the Production Manager at Watershed. He helps clients by building campaign websites and sitelets, and by forcing arcane CMS systems to display clean, clear designs that please client and donor alike.

A native of California, Tom graduated from Cal State East Bay (formerly Cal State Hayward) in 2006, majoring in Computer Science, and minoring in Multimedia and Electronic Art. Surprisingly, some of his education actually turned out to be useful for his career, and in some of his spare time, he can be found looking up the latest web design tips and trends, and learning the best ways to create pages that display exactly the same across browsers and platforms.

When he’s not doing that, he can generally be found somewhere in about a three hour driving radius of San Francisco, with his camera. Prone to take more than a hundred pictures in just a single afternoon, Tom estimates that he has taken more than 40,000 photographs since he got his first digital camera in 1997. He refuses to estimate what percentage were blurry.

When Katie made up her own major at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, she had no idea that her degree in branding and communications would lead her on a crusade for youth development through arts education and culture study. Nonetheless, she has spent the last five years or so working with a variety of non-profit organizations sharing this common pillar. Working as a graphic designer, project coordinator, office manager, camp counselor, set designer, and more, Katie has mastered the art of random skills, and is always looking to collect more.

Originally from Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, Katie has been see-sawing between open space and cities, finally realizing that some places have both, which is why she is thrilled to have moved to the Bay Area.  When she isn’t doing important things in the office, she enjoys eating, cooking, skiing, and watching family dramadies. She also has an impressive assortment of bizarre, but non-threatening allergies. 

Brian joins the Watershed team after working as communications and online director with the League of Young (formerly the League of Pissed Off) Voters in Portland, Maine. Before using the web to make young people political players with the League, Brian did everything he could to make those “peace through music” bumper stickers ring true: in 2003 he helped the band Phish launch a national voter registration drive and continued arts-based activism with HeadCount through 2004. 

Brian holds a degree in Environmental Sciences from Northern Arizona University and while working as a fisheries biologist in Northern California, he decided he wanted to swim upstream for change alongside humans, not salmonids (nor Phishheads). He earned his Masters in Environmental Advocacy and Organizing from Antioch University New England, where he also TA’d two classes - in Nonprofit Leadership and Globalization & Democracy.

When not working, Brian enjoys capturing the pedestrian with photos and essays (and photo essays). He also likes riding bikes and hiking, making bad jokes good and the Boston Red Sox.

Account Director Nzinga Koné-Miller is a veteran project manager and strategist with a nonprofit and commercial technology, political, and communications background. She has thirteen years experience managing web development projects and over nine years experience working with nonprofits in the technology sector. She has been hiring and managing project and account teams for over seven years.

Prior to joining Watershed, Nzinga was a member of the project management team at the groundbreaking nonprofit consulting and technology firm Carol/Trevelyan Strategy Group (CTSG). She has managed digital implementation projects and developed acquisition, fundraising and advocacy strategies for a variety of organizations, including Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, AFL-CIO affiliate Working America, the Breast Cancer Fund, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher and The Nation magazine. She is a regular contributor to the Grassroots Fundraising Journal.

Nzinga was raised on the quintessential 1970s California vegetarian fare of nuts, twigs and tamari-seasoned tofu, and now has a passion for food lit, cooking blogs, and an interest in food politics. She received her BA in History and Studio Art from Williams College.

Fran came to Watershed with 5 years of online fundraising and advocacy experience--working with clients that are changing the world including The Humane Society of the United States, Habitat for Humanity International, AmeriCares, Earth Justice and The UN Foundation.Before diving into the world wide web, she worked to improve health care’s response to intimate partner violence through education and public policy development as Program Specialist at Futures Without Violence.

Fran is shamelessly in love with San Francisco--especially the Mission district where taquerias, parklets, coffee shops, bakeries, and gourmet ice cream parlors abound. She’s also a fan of keeping public services properly funded and accessible: education, libraries, art, transportation and radio. In her spare time, she thinks a lot about the politics of food and how it’s marketed to children.  She also spends way too much time creating cute vegetarian bento box lunches for her kindergartener.

Fran received her BA in Community Studies with a minor in Sociology from UC Santa Cruz and her MSW from San Francisco State.

After a serendipitous route that includes work in overseas cultural exchange, organizing media education conferences, and curating events for one of San Francisco’s best bookstores ever—the worker-run Modern Times—Brenda landed in the world of Web development. Partly she wanted to be paid more than a bookstore wage, but mostly she looked around at the nonprofit and progressive community she worked in and saw a need for some solid Web skills. Now she’s at Watershed doing just what she wanted—helping great causes get their message out.

Brenda received her degree in comparative literature from the University of California at San Diego. When not coding, she spends her free time reading, making things up in Spanish, and screening documentaries for a local film festival. She loves the outdoors and would probably live in a tent if she could. She can often be found backpacking, kayaking, boogie boarding, or cross-country skiing. A Bay Area local, she inherited a love of travel from her immigrant parents and is a strong believer in life-outside-the-USA. She has lived in Australia and also in Mexico (where people knew when she was making things up in Spanish).

When Kathryn was in 6th grade she started a “Save the Whales” club at her school. She believes that they probably saved at least one small whale via the butterfly effect. She’s been active in various nonprofits ever since. She comes to Watershed with a background in online marketing, and specializes in writing and project management.

Kathryn has a Bachelor’s degree in philosophy and religion with minors in psychology and English. She received an M.F.A. in creative writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She likes: aquariums, cognitive science, puppets, poems, anthropology, large bodies of water, folklore, riding in cars, naps, whales, linguistics, playing the piano and the Giant Australian Cuttlefish. She dislikes: when people block the doors on the bus, courtroom TV.

Will has been helping progressive nonprofits develop and implement online advocacy and fundraising campaigns since 2005. He spent three years at Donordigital handling everything from drafting copy to designing landing pages, crunching numbers to creating strategy. Along the way, Will was lucky enough to work with great organizations like The Humane Society of the United States, Human Rights Campaign, and the Campaign to Defend the Constitution.

Will embraced the world of nonprofit fundraising after a brief stint at a title company threatened to turn him into Bartleby the Scrivener. Before that, he majored in English with a Creative Writing emphasis at Stanford University, which probably explains the references to Bartleby the Scrivener.

When not being a nerd at work, Will enjoys being a nerd at home. He reads and writes comic books, indulges a serious addiction to crossword puzzles, and plays bass guitar with a spectacular lack of talent.