Progress Missouri is a multi-issue progressive advocacy organization that combines cutting edge online organizing and communications with rapid and hard-hitting earned media strategies. Year round, Progress Missouri will work to engage citizens from across the state around issues of immediate state or local concern.
Our mission is to provide a strong, credible voice in advancing progressive solutions to critical community problems. But we don’t do that on our own – we work as a communications team for the entire progressive community.
We’re a marketing department for progressive ideas – a campaign that never stops. We work year-round to challenge conservative propaganda in the media and make sure that progressive perspectives are heard.
By working together and uniting around issues important to Missouri residents, we will:
- Build a stronger progressive movement in Missouri. We will use innovative, internet-based organizing and communications strategies and tactics to dramatically expand active public support for progressive issues and policies.
- Secure major advances in progressive public policy. Working with other progressive groups, we will use the power of real people to encourage bold policy changes.
Our Team
Sean Soendker Nicholson
Executive Director
Sean Soendker Nicholson is the Executive Director of Progress Missouri, helping to found the communications and research organization in 2011. Previously, Sean was the Executive Director of Fired Up! Missouri and a Vice President at Kennedy Communications, a progressive communications and research firm in Washington DC. A proud Mizzou Tiger and Georgetown Hoya, he lives in Columbia with his wife, Trista, and two sons, Judah and Abram.
Pamela Merritt
Communications Director
Prior to joining the Progress Missouri team, Pamela Merritt was the Statewide Digital and Data Coordinator at Planned Parenthood Advocates in Missouri. In 2011, Pamela served as the Online Manager for the Mississippians for Healthy Families Campaign that successfully defeated an anti-choice ‘personhood’ ballot initiative in Mississippi. Pamela is also a member of the Center for American Progress’ Women’s Health Leadership Network, and was named one of the world’s 50 most powerful bloggers by The Guardian in 2008. Pamela has been a staff writer for RH Reality Check, a contributor to Feministing.com, and her writing has been published in the Chicago Sun-Times, the Guardian, and Salon. Pamela is a lifelong hockey fanatic (Go Blues!!), has a poorly trained beagle who also loves hockey, and can often be found live tweeting NHL games while snacking on Cheetos.
Cameron Sullivan
Research Director
Cameron became active in political campaigns in 2008 when he was as an intern for President Obama's campaign in Springfield. In 2010, he served as a field organizer for the Missouri Democratic Party's coordinated campaign in Greene County, leading a field effort that helped reelect State Representative Sara Lampe by just 100 votes despite the GOP wave. In 2011, he joined the Senator McCaskill's reelection campaign and was a part of the aggressive research team that helped defeat Todd Akin. Most recently before joining Progress Missouri, he was a research associate at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in DC. Cameron is anxiously awaiting science to catch up with science fiction so he can own a real lightsaber and a hoverboard.
