Subject: hiring moves/operations update
From: "Chris Lu" <[email-masked]>
To: "John Podesta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2008 17:29:36 -0500

John - Just wanted to give you a heads-up on some of the hiring that
I've done this week.

Cassandra, Melody, and I are all on payroll now.  I've also hired two
research assistants:  Blake Roberts and Mike Mongan.  Blake is a Harvard
Law School graduate, 4th Circuit clerk, and has been volunteering for
the campaign policy staff.  Mike just finished clerking for Justice
Souter.  Both of them are going to start cataloguing policy promises,
first the big four (energy, health care, economy, and national security)
and then work their way through the other ones.  I also am looking at a
woman, Desiree Pipkins, who is the research director at the NAACP Legal
Defense Fund.  Cassandra recommended her.

I've talked to Ryan Cunningham, who was Jim Johnson's assistant in 2004,
to come on in a mid- level role.  Don and Melody could use him on the
agency team, and Ryan handles energy issues for Glover Park, so he could
staff that policy group, as well as pitch in on economy and national
security (if necessary).  There are also a couple of projects that cut
across different working groups like the personnel database and website
that could use some coordination.  And he could help me manage things in
general.

I've run the budget numbers, and we're well within our $300K budget
(we're actually at about $275K), even with a lot of padding on the
travel budget.  The campaign is picking up our lease costs which has
freed up a good amount of money.

On the operations front, we've convened the working group with Betsy
Myers, Brad Kiley, and Katy Kale (Sherrod Brown's office manager).  Brad
and Katy are coming with me tomorrow to meet with GSA.