Changing Democracy at its roots.

We exist to help put more progressive democratic candidates up for election.

For Future Candidates

In our media saturated worlds, we hear so much about the actions of our federal government that it is easy to forget the words once spoken by Tip O'Neil: "All politics is local." Real change happens in your state, in your county, and in your city. Those changes are the ones that effect your every day life, from the taxes you pay to how they are distributed. Does every child in your state have access to the doctors and medicine they need? Who is taking action towards universal healthcare? Who is fighting for your civil liberties? Who is taking down corporate welfare by the foundation? Who decides how money is spent in your local school? Who negotiates with your utility companies? Who fights for the separation of church and state?

Your local government.

These are people that live in your neighborhood. You live and work side by side with them everyday, and they understand the needs of the network of individuals that surround you. They have their fingers on the pulse of what makes our society work at the root level.

There is no formula for launching a political career, but there are high level activities that you can do to increase the probability of running a successful campaign. In all politics, the most important thing that you can do as an aspiring leader, whether you are ultimately elected or not, is to connect with your community. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of local charitable and non-profit organizations in your area that are looking for highly qualified help. They need help in management and making decisions and cannot afford the price tag of high cost corporate consultants. They need help in analyzing legal paperwork and contractual obligations, but they cannot pay hundreds of dollars an hour to an attorney to do so. They need the help of business professionals from project planners to information technology specialists. They need the help of finance professionals from executive officers to accountants. They need the help of legal professionals from analyzing legislation to negotiating contacts. These are real organizations helping people in your towns that need real help.

You need to network with other individuals that place a high value on civic contributions. Not only are these organizations full of people with these values, but our own growing network of professionals offers a forum for discussion and assistance. Everyone needs help, and these people are there to provide that safety net.

Along this path, you will develop personal experiences that will build both your political and your professional resume. You will meet people that will help you grow as a politician and a human being. You will gain an even better grasp and understanding of your community and its needs. There certainly is no sure route to becoming a politician, but there is to becoming a better human being and better citizen. Ultimately, that is what counts.

We are looking for professionals with expertise in just about any field. We need business professionals, PhD's, lawyers, artists, activists... you name it. Be prepared to donate at least 5 hours a week of time. We are selective about our candidates as you will be dealing with our community organizations directly. We are offering you an opportunity to gain experience with a multitude of organizations in various capacities. Our goal is your personal and professional development. At the end of the day, we want you to be proud of the work that you have done and the organizations that you have served.

To submit your resume as a candidate, please fill out the Application Form. Your application will be reviewed by a member of our staff, and if you are a fit for our needs a phone interview will be scheduled. Don't be discouraged if you aren't selected immediately. We are also selecting members based on involvement in our community on our site. Keep posting, keep helping, and apply again in the future!

For Community Organizations

The primary advantage for community organizations is access to a highly qualified network of professionals able to help you decipher the problems of your day to day world. We are building a continually growing group of volunteer professionals. We have experienced professionals with established careers in fields from health law and policy to information technology.

We are building a network of professionals supported by an activist community. As a community organization, we provide access to resources previously out of reach. We can help you get in touch with current and future politicians, so that you can compete on a lobbyist level with even the largest corporation. You can connect with others organizations in your community and share the load. We all have the same problems, we all need to find solutions. Lets travel that road together.

For Everyone Else

Not only are we helping to put more progressive, socially minded candidates into local offices, but we are also helping community organizations reach resources they otherwise would not have access to. By helping our organization, you are helping communities around the country from the ground up. You are gaining real choice in politics by putting more qualified candidates up for offices everywhere.

You can help us by donating time. We, as a community, rely upon you for help. We do the best we can as individuals, but the power of our community vastly out weighs the power of any single one of us as an individual. Join today. Sign up and see if you can help us answer questions. See if a local community organization needs your help as a volunteer this weekend.

You can help us by donating money. We have an incredibly slim infrastructure that we run on a shoestring budget, but the expenses are growing as our organization grows. We rely upon users such as yourself to keep us up and running. When that money dries up, so do our services. A donation to us helps us to support a growing base of other charitable organizations and provides those organizations with low cost expertise that they desperately need. It helps prepare the politicians of the future by giving them experience in your neighborhoods with your neighbors. Every little bit counts. Please, donate today.

Management Profiles

Scott Van Den Plas
President

Mr. Van Den Plas will be responsible for strategic planning of the corporation as well as overall management and future direction of the company. He is directly responsible for managing all of the Fallout Corp employees, as well as building and maintaining the relationships with other non-profit organizations. He will direct the donation and marketing efforts, as well as coordinate new revenues generated from fee for service contracts.

Scott previously acted as Chief Information Officer with Originate Home Loans in Westmont, IL. While at Originate, he managed the development of a custom built Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application. This application coordinates efforts of outside sales representatives with the internal sales, production, and management teams to drive sales performance. The application also provides a standardized and centralized reporting system that tracks and logs all broker performance activity to increase marketing effectiveness and allow convenient executive oversight of summary, as well as detailed, business performance metrics.

Mr. Van Den Plas was also responsible for budgeting and vendor relationships, including coordination of outsourced infrastructure support and help desk staff. He also provided detailed technology documentation, budgeting, resource planning and allocation for inclusion into the Private Placement Memorandum. Mr. Van Den Plas coordinated development efforts for the Loan Origination System (LOS) and CRM applications, with a focus on a migration to a next generation Service Oriented Architecture. He acted as the company liaison to the development lead and development contractors. He directly developed specification and functionality documentation and plans for next generation systems in conjunction with leads from multiple vendors, internal staff, and contractors.

Mr. Van Den Plas graduated from the University of Illinois in Urbana/Champaign with a B.A. in Political Science and minors in Math and Philosophy. He has held many professional technology certifications specializing in security and operations management, and acts as a Precinct Captain within the Democratic Party.

Ryan Kanno
Vice-President of Engineering

Mr. Kanno currently works as a Scientist with Space & Warfare Systems Center in Hawaii. He holds a 4.0 GPA in the MBA program at the University of Hawaii, graduating this semester. Ryan already holds a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he also received his Bachelor of Science in Engineering. He was the 2005 Graduate Business Student Association President, and is a member of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society and the Beta Gamma Sigma Business Honor Society. Ryan also received the Anderson Consulting Outstanding Student Award in the year 2000.

Mr. Kanno holds expertise in C, C++, Java, JSP, PHP, ASP, Perl, Smalltalk, and Ruby programming languages. He also has extensive experience in multiple database management systems. Mr. Kanno will be responsible as the lead architect of Fallout Corp’s data model, as well as the lead engineer for software design.

Harper Reed
Chief Technology Officer

Mr. Reed currently works for Skinny Corp as a Software Engineer. He is the lead engineer responsible for the design and maintenance of the Threadless web site. Threadless is a social network framework for over 300,000 dedicated users and currently sells approximately 20,000 T-Shirts per day. Prior to working for Skinny Corp, Harper also held positions with Cramer and Krasselt and World Book Publishing. While with Cramer and Krasselt, he acted as the lead
technologist and technical liaison to account management and creative staff, and also worked as the lead architect for client web applications. His portfolio includes clients such as AirTran and CareerBuilder, and he was the lead engineer on a full life cycle Super Bowl viral campaign ad. At World Book Publishing, Mr. Reed accelerated the adoption of new technologies and standards as he lead the development staff and managed the offshore engineering team.

Harper is an expert in web application and web interface development, with expertise in PHP and LAMP, JSP, J2EE, Java, Ruby on Rails, C#, Flash Actionscript, ASP, and VBScript. He is also a leading innovator for mobile technologies and applications, as well as deeply experienced in creating and maintaining online social networks. Mr. Reed holds a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science and Philosophy from Cornell College. He was also the recipient of the 2002 Prix Ars Electronica award as the Net Vision Honorary Mention.

Mr. Reed will be responsible for designing and implementing Fallout Corp’s web interface with leading edge design and mobile access technologies. His experience in building and maintaining a large and extremely active social network, as well as his depth of knowledge of available networking technologies will be vital for Fallout Corp’s success.