This summer, the inaugural Higher Ground Institute Media Innovation Fellows took on one of the biggest challenges facing our movement: how to meet people where they actually are in today’s fragmented, decentralized, and creator-driven media landscape.

Over the past three months, our fellows have been experimenting, building, and testing new ways to help progressive campaigns and organizations break through online by designing tools and strategies that expand how we measure impact, shape narratives, and activate communities.

Their work reflects a shared understanding: the way we communicate power, culture, and politics is changing faster than ever. To stay effective, the progressive movement must move with equal speed and imagination. Put simply: we need a new campaign playbook to meet this moment. 

Below we’re sharing the resources they’ve developed for the ecosystem through the fellowship:

1. A playbook for scaling WhatsApp Channels to engage immigrant communities.
2. A media planning platform that simplifies and optimizes campaign budget decisions. 
3. A targeting tool that helps campaigns better understand who creators’ audiences are. 
4. A playbook to drive direct civic actions with livestream creators’ communities.
5. A research methodology that utilizes online ethnography to understand how voters experience their social media feeds.
6. A playbook for utilizing Instagram chatbots to drive offline political action.

Inside the Fellowship 

The Media Innovation Fellowship was designed to resource and accelerate promising ideas at the intersection of technology, media, and organizing. Each of the six exceptional fellows received a $15,000 grant, strategic mentorship, 1:1 coaching, and showcase opportunities. From gamified civic live-streaming to WhatsApp-based outreach and smarter media planning strategies, these projects show what’s possible when innovation meets purpose. 

Below, you can see the fellows connecting, collaborating, and sharing ideas during one of their Zoom sessions. Energy and creativity were driving forces for this inaugural cohort!

	Laura Liibbe The Fellow: Laura Liibbe is a media strategist and product leader with 15+ years of experience reaching immigrant communities. At Noticias Para Inmigrantes, she scales progressive media products, leads audience research, and experiments with platforms like WhatsApp to build trusted, multilingual content that informs and empowers Latino immigrants. WhatsApp Channels: A Guide for Progressive Media & Nonprofits Objective: Developing a playbook for using WhatsApp Channels as a high-trust infrastructure to engage Latino and immigrant audiences, build trust, and test scalable models for civic information and activation. Takeaways: WhatsApp is different from SMS or social media – it’s its own powerful ecosystem. Utilizing Whatapp can offer an opportunity to reach immigrant and multilingual communities where they already are. Dive Deeper: Make the most of WhatsApp by checking out the playbook here
	Andrew Markoff The Fellow: Andrew Markoff built the analytics engine that powered the Biden and Harris campaigns’ paid media strategy—the most expansive and expensive political ad effort in American history. He has served as a campaign manager and senior strategist for candidates nationwide, leading teams to victory in competitive races from school boards to governors’ offices and Congress. M3 Media Objective: Creating a cross-channel media planning platform that optimizes campaign budgets and buying decisions to reach and persuade voters efficiently.  Takeaways: Paid media remains the largest campaign expense, yet it is often inefficiently allocated. With voter-level data and nonlinear optimization algorithms, campaigns can increase target reach without spending more.  Dive Deeper: Learn more about the opportunity this platform presents here.
	Steven McAlpine The Fellow: Steven McAlpine, co-founder and CEO of INTRVL, is a “40 under 40” recognized leader in pioneering measurement and optimization techniques for digital media campaigns designed to influence public opinion. Prior to INTRVL, he led audience targeting and measurement at Hawkfish and media analytics initiatives for Fortune 500 marketers like Johnson & Johnson, Macy’s, and Dick’s. INTRVL’S Creator Audience Profiling Objective: Equipping campaigns and advocacy groups with deeper insights into who creators’ audiences are, how they engage, and what motivates them politically. Takeaways: Traditional creator programs lack robust audience metrics beyond basic demographics; INTRVL provides a platform with political and behavioral insights to make creator campaigns more effective. Dive Deeper: Learn more about creator audience profiling here. INTRVL is seeking more organizational partners and funders to scale this for the 2026 midterms.
	Jesse Thomas The Fellow: Jesse Thomas is a pioneering social impact strategist. An Obama For America-trained organizer, marketer, and technologist, Jesse has led strategic impact and mobilization efforts for some of the nation’s largest political campaigns, nonprofits, and mission-driven brands. Activating Live Audiences: Performance marketing for social impact with The Civics Center Objective: Testing new ways to drive measurable social actions through sustained sponsorships with livestream creators and communities on YouTube, Twitch, and Kick.  Takeaways: The Democratic ecosystem has struggled to connect with live-streaming audiences, spaces where paid political media is limited and our movement often feels absent. In 2020, direct streamer sponsorships showed promise but proved hard to sustain as favorability declined. Project Shoutout pilots a new approach: leading with issues, building long-term creator relationships, and driving creator-led conversions to bring progressive engagement back into these communities. Dive Deeper: Learn more about how Project Shoutout is exploring establishing ROI benchmarks for movement-focused actions via streaming partnerships, and how you can get involved.
	Liz Utrup The Fellow: Liz Utrup started in politics on President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. She has since amassed extensive communications and operations experience across political campaigns, government, issue advocacy, and paid media. Liz is currently Managing Director at A|L Media, where she directs account services for paid media campaigns on behalf of Democratic candidates and causes across the country. The Real People Project Objective: Using online ethnography to observe how voters engage with digital content in real time to better understand how to shape more effective communication strategies. Takeaways: Social media feeds provide rich insights that help campaigns connect with audiences, recruit influencers, and deploy context-driven messaging. Dive Deeper: Check out her research findings, and learn how you can adopt this new approach in your work.
	Gabriella Zutrau The Fellow: Gabriella Zutrau is a digital consultant and content creator who helps political campaigns and nonprofits turn online enthusiasm into offline impact. She pioneers tools like social media chatbots to build low-friction, high-conversion digital infrastructure. She advises organizations on preparing for viral moments, turning online reach into tangible votes, volunteers, and victories. Get off of Instagram: The playbook for driving offline political action with chatbots Objective: Providing a playbook with recommendations for social media chatbot usage in politics and advocacy contexts.  Takeaways: Converting audiences from Instagram is difficult and high-friction; chatbots streamline engagement, automate repetitive tasks, and bring supporters up the ladder from awareness to action. Dive Deeper: Grab the playbook to learn more (includes free month of social chatbot Manychat Pro)

What’s next?

Reach out to institute@highergroundlabs.com if you want to get in touch with the fellows. See more from them by subscribing to our newsletter and connecting with us on LinkedIn.

Higher Ground Institute (HGI) is a strategic innovation engine for the left, on a mission to test and scale new approaches to organizing and digital infrastructure.