Shasti Conrad was elected as our Chair in January 2023. She is the first woman of color and youngest chair of the Washington State Democrats! She is also the first South Asian woman to lead a state party in the entire country! Previously, Shasti was the Chair of the King County Democrats from 2018-2022, making her the first woman of color chair in the org’s history.
Prior to that, Shasti was the State Committeewoman for the 37th Legislative District in Washington State, 1st Vice Chair of the King County Democrats, and Elections Committee Co-Chair for the Washington State Democrats.
She is a versatile strategist and thought leader with a broad range of political, policy and operations experience within government at all levels and throughout the private and non-profit sectors. She launched her own consulting firm in 2016 to support government, campaign, and business clients looking to better our world. She was named to the American Association of Political Consultants’ 40 under 40 list and Seattle Met’s 100 Most Influential List (top 10 in politicos category).
Shasti served President Barack Obama as a senior staff assistant in the White House, and a briefings manager on the 2012 campaign, leading the preparation of daily briefing materials on all campaign events, meetings, calls and political background for the President, First Lady and Vice President. Shasti’s first jobs were as an intern in the White House Office of Urban Affairs and as travelling advance staff for Vice President Biden.
Since leaving the White House, Shasti has served as a Senior Graduate Fellow at the Malala Fund, providing programmatic support within the organization and staffing Malala Yousafzai and her family at the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony. She became Chief Operating Officer for Soze Productions, a creative social impact agency working with clients ranging from Art for Amnesty and the Environmental Defense Fund, to the United Nations, immigrant and LGBT rights movements and grassroots activists organizing in the wake of police misconduct in Ferguson, MO. She served on the National Advance team for the Senator Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign, and later as political director on Jim Barksdale’s campaign for US Senate in Georgia. Between 2017 and 2020, Shasti was the US Campaign Manager and Regional Planning Advisor for the 100 Million Campaign, launched by Nobel Peace Prize winner, Kailash Satyarthi, which aims to be the largest youth mobilization in history to end child labor and trafficking.
Shasti has worked for 3 Nobel Peace Prize winners. For the 2020 election cycle, Shasti was the National Director of Surrogates for the Bernie Sanders campaign, recruiting and deploying over 250 celebrities, influencers, policy experts, musicians, and activists across the country. In 2020, Shasti launched two PACs to support the general election cycle: Opportunity PAC focuses on electing Black womxn to the WA state legislature and CTRL Z focuses on Gen Z voter registration and turnout. In 2021, her team won several awards for their livestream productions from AAPC, W3, and the Davey Awards. In 2022, they were nominated for a regional Emmy for Diversity and Inclusion long-form content.
Shasti received her B.A. in Sociology and International Studies with Honors from Seattle University, and her Master’s in Public Affairs and International Development at Princeton University in 2015.
