Our story
by Shion Deysarkar, CEO & Co-Founder
My birthday is on November 6, which in 2016, was two days before that election. My partner decided to throw a massive election-birthday party, complete with pins, blue streamers, and a custom cake that said "Congrats Madame President!". We were beyond excited at the start at the party, but as you can imagine, things quickly unraveled. By the end of the night, it was safe to say it was the worst birthday party I had ever had.
I was completely heartbroken the next morning. I had been raised to believe that my country represented good and honest values, but I was forced to recognize how wrong I had been. Despite the sadness I felt in that moment, I wanted desperately to restore my belief in what it meant to be American. I started attending organizing meetings, volunteering on campaigns, and getting more and more involved in progressive politics.
Eventually some friends and I built a tool that helped activists mobilize their existing social connections. The technology had some decent success through the 2020 elections, with dozens of campaigns and organizations using it to reach hundreds of thousands of voters. Even with that success, though, we felt we were only scratching the surface of building a lasting progressive society.
After the elections, I went back to the drawing board. I wanted to provide a platform that would help organizers and activists build real, lasting power. After months of research, I came to the conclusion that real power came from communities, and that if we wanted to help the people fighting for change, we needed to give them something that would let them build strong communities around their causes. It was from this belief that Unified was born.
We've put a lot of effort into Unified since then. We researched and absorbed the work of past efforts to scale and mobilize communities We talked with thousands of activists and hundreds of organizations to understand their needs and get their feedback on what we're building. Our hope is that we can provide these people and the world at-large a place to come together and build towards a better future.
