Marcus oversees American Data’s day-to-day operations from setting the company’s direction and working with clients to building much of the internal software the team uses every day. He has a knack for solving complicated problems and, fortunately for everyone else, he seems to genuinely enjoy it.

Before American Data, Marcus ran the political division at Wiland, the largest provider of direct-mail donors to right-of-center political organizations and nonprofits, where he grew the business by hundreds of clients across leading fundraising agencies, campaigns, committees, and nonprofits. Earlier in his career, he helped raise tens of millions of dollars in email fundraising for Republican committees and presidential campaigns.

Marcus’s favorite thing to do is bringing people together. At conferences, that means deciding on the spot that everyone he knows is coming to dinner – one big table, the whole menu, family style. He is an expert (if not obsessive) cook, that guy who talks to people in elevators, and he has an eccentric enthusiasm for splitting wood.

He and his wife, Paulina — who, he admits, everybody likes more than him — recently moved into a new house in Fairfax, Virginia, and are expecting a baby girl.

Michael oversees the direct-mail side of American Data, helping clients build and engage the audiences that fuel their missions.

He brings more than a decade of experience working behind the scenes to raise tens of millions of dollars for nonprofits, including advocacy organizations, pro-life ministries, Catholic missions, membership organizations, and candidates at every level. Before launching American Data, Michael served as Chief Audience Builder at one of the industry’s largest fundraising agencies, where he spent years developing successful data and audience strategies for hundreds of clients.

Michael is a “movement guy” first and foremost. He stumbled into direct response fundraising after college as a temporary way to take part in the conservative movement and remain in D.C.—and it grew on him. His conviction is that the movement’s grassroots strength isn’t accidental: it was built engagement by engagement, donor by donor, over sixty years. Sustaining it for the next sixty requires bringing the same seriousness to fundraising and audience development that the movement brings to policy, politics, and principle.

In that vein, Michael rarely passes up an opportunity to name Robert Morris as his favorite Founder—”because without his wallet, we’d all be British.”

A Northeast Ohio native and diehard Cleveland sports fan, Michael lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and their newborn daughter.