It's a windy rush hour on a Thursday afternoon in San Francisco. Walking past a noisy Giants Stadium, fans cheer as the Giants step up to the plate. I'm looking for HATCH space, a 4,000 square foot incubator across from the stadium in San Francisco's Design District, where I'm meeting Candice Dayoan, a designer with 50+1 Strategies. After wandering through the halls of the incubator, looking for signs of Candice, I find her bunkered down in the Star Wars themed "Hoth" conference room.
Candice comes from a unique career background. She studied computer animation in college and then became an online organizer with Organizing for America during the 2008 election. Now she's at 50+1 Strategies, along with other Obama Alumni, as the head creative director.
Candice is no stranger to NationBuilder.
During the 2012 election cycle, she designed over twenty-five NationBuilder sites for races all over California and kept track of the different themes and individual color schemes using an intricately organized Google Doc. At the California Democratic Convention two weeks ago, Candice participated in a panel we organized for the California Young Dems with NationBuilder's VP of Community.
Her latest NationBuilder project is for Warriors on the Waterfront, a grassroots organization designed to support the redevelopment project that would move the Golden State Warriors basketball arena to San Francisco Piers 30-32. The website provides information about the project's scope and details on how to get involved with Warriors on the Waterfront's advocacy efforts.
Candice is clearly humbled by being able to do what she loves in a place she is passionate about. "It has always been my dream to work at the intersect of tech and art in California, and to be able to do it while changing the world is definitely amazing," says Candice.
A long time native to the Bay area, Candice has an encyclopedic knowledge of the city. She imparted her knowledge of the best coffee shops (proclaiming that Blue Bottle is "definitely the best"; our in-house SF expert disagrees), punk clubs in the Mission and the Richmond district where she has lived for the last six years. I left 50+1 Strategies feeling her contagious love of San Francisco and all things food, music, and of course, tech.
