Kai Mateo

Kai Mateo (he/him) is a Regional Campaigns Director at the Fairness Project. Prior to joining Fairness, he served as Campaign Manager for Philadelphia Councilmember Jamie Gauthier’s successful 2023 re-election. During the 2022 midterm elections, he was Deputy Organizing Director for the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. He was one of the leaders of the team that bucked national trends and flipped a U.S. Senate seat for John Fetterman, elected Josh Shapiro governor, and flipped the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for the first time in 12 years. He was previously the Federal Climate Campaign Manager for Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania, New York League of Conservation Voters, New Jersey LCV, and Maryland LCV, where he led four statewide campaigns to pass the largest climate change bill in US history: the Inflation Reduction Act. Before joining LCV, Kai worked as a Regional Relational Organizing Manager for the Democratic National Committee, where he was part of a team that built a groundbreaking, nationwide relational organizing program to elect Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Democrats down the ballot in 2020. In addition to his work in political campaigns, Kai has extensive experience in community organizing and leadership development with a variety of organizations. He has coached public narrative and organizing with Marshall Ganz, the Formerly Incarcerated Peoples and Families Movement, the Recovery Advocacy Project, the Bloomberg City Leadership Initiative, and other organizations since 2015. He is a graduate of Deep Springs College and Harvard College, where he was a Gardner Fellow and a Mellon Mays Fellow. Raised in San Diego, Kai now lives in Philadelphia.