About Fuse

Adam Glickman

is Director of Public Affairs for SEIU Healthcare 775NW, the long-term care workers union representing 30,000 home care and nursing home workers in Washington and Montana. As director of Public Affairs he oversees SEIU Healthcare 775NW's political, legislative, community outreach, and media relations work. Adam grew up on the East Coast and became involved in labor and other social justice work while at Wesleyan University. After graduating, he worked in New York doing communications and political work, including as the Communications Director for New York's Working Families Party. He has two wonderful children - Micah and Asher.

Jeff Hansen

Jeff is a marketing professional and business strategist currently working for Microsoft's Chief Marketing Officer where he leads the company's brand strategy function. In over 20 years at Microsoft Jeff has developed a deep and diverse set of skills across a range professions including human resources, advertising, brand and image management, market research, marketing communications, PR and crisis management, product management, and leading the company's "marketing profession excellence" function. Prior to rejoining the central marketing group, Jeff spent five years working for Microsoft's "Chief Software Architect", where he was focused on helping implement advanced technologies and computing scenarios that are critical to the company's long term success.

Jeff is a Seattle native. He had a decade long hiatus in Oregon during which he graduated from the University of Oregon with honors in Psychology and Sociology. Jeff returned to Seattle in 1991 having a short career in the legal profession before joining Microsoft later that year. Jeff currently resides in Bellevue with his wife and two boys. He is currently past President of the Bellevue Schools Foundation, a member of the U of O regional council, a Social Venture Partner, and a frequent guest speaker at various universities.

Tom Miller

Tom is a retired professional software developer who worked at Digital Equipment Corporation and worked at Microsoft between 1989 until 2012. He is an expert in file systems and storage, and was a key developer of Microsoft Windows NT.

Mr. Miller enjoys skiing, sailing, hiking and traveling with his wife and two sons. He has been an avid supporter of Save the Children for about 30 years, and has visited programs in Azerbaijan and Georgia, Myanmar (Burma), Malawi, Bhutan and the United States. He has participated in a Jimmy Carter Habitat for the Humanities build in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and another Habitat build in Guatemala. His humanitarian priorities are the chief fuel for his passion for progressive politics!

Dean Nielsen

Dean is principal of Cerillion N4 Partners, a political consulting and government relations firm where he works for political, non-profit, union and corporate clients in Washington State, across the country and around the world. Formerly, he was National Political Director for Progressive Majority, where he and his staff recruited, trained and elected more than 1,000 progressive champions. Dean is a career politico, having worked in various capacities on more than 250 campaigns throughout the Western United States and Eastern Europe starting with Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign. His lengthy client list includes Governor Gary Locke (WA), Solidarity Party (Poland), the Gore/Lieberman Campaign, as well as issue campaigns for groups such as EMILY's List, National Education Association, Wellstone Action!, NARAL Pro-Choice Washington, SEIU, Harborview Hospital, PCCC and the Democratic Party in several states. In addition to campaigns, he helped build and expand a grassroots and grasstops lobbying program for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, conceived and launched the Institute for a Democratic Future, did qualitative research for several casinos in Las Vegas, managed a crisis communications project for a Fortune 500 company and does a variety of projects for several clean energy companies.

Daniel Weise

Daniel is a community activist who is really worried about the march to fascism that the Republican party is hell-bent on leading us on. His other big thing is climate change. So, as you can tell, Daniel tends to dwell on existential threats to our civilization. Daniel is on the second of his two careers. His first was computer science researcher (PhD MIT AI Lab) where he started out as a professor at Stanford before helping to start up Microsoft Research in the early 90s by leading one of its first research groups.

He left Microsoft Research in 2004 to work on computational evolution, but discovered climate change and joined the advocacy community after quickly realizing that solving global warming was not technical problem, but a social and political one. He has been on the boards of the Cascade Bicycle Club, the Hertz Foundation, Washington Environment Council, and Washington Bikes, and serves on the board of Climate Solutions. His latest project is the Take Action Network, a web platform for movement building by focusing on the needs of individual activists, not on advocacy orgs. The result is a system that shares knowledge and power, giving individuals more options and methods for creating change.

Ahmed Gaya

Ahmed Gaya is a climate justice activist based in the Pacific Northwest. Over the last ten years, he has helped run campaigns in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. He started his climate activism in High School, working on campaigns to regulate pollution from coal-fired power plants in his home of upstate New York, and spent summers fighting mountaintop removal in West Virginia. He is a founder of several grassroots climate action groups such as Rising Tide Seattle.

In 2015 Ahmed convened the sHell No! Action Council that coordinated iconic land and water protests against Shell's Arctic drilling rig docked in Seattle. Ahmed was a founding steering committee member of the Prison Ecology Project, and believes we are strongest when we find strategic points of intersection between progressive movements.

Julie Robinson

Julie Robinson is a Settlement Advisor for Ringler, the largest settlement planning company in the United States, where she consults with individuals receiving settlements utilizing a comprehensive approach to their financial situation. Her background includes sales training, public speaking, and intensive presentations. Julie previously served as the Regional Vice President of Phoenix Co., where she was the manager of sales, and she received her B.A. in Rhetoric & Communications from the University of Oregon. When not working, Julie enjoys watching or playing sports, attending shows at the Paramount, traveling, and attempting to exercise regularly.

Lyle Quasim

Lyle Quasim is a respected leader and advocate in Pierce County and across the state. He has served leadership roles in a wide array of educational and advocacy organizations working to advance racial equity, economic development, and social justice. Quasim chairs the Tacoma Black Collective, a community of black people dedicated to civic engagement through volunteer service. He was the first African American to head Washington’s Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS), has served as the Chief of Staff for the Pierce County Executive, and countless community boards. He is an engaged community leader with extensive background in advancing social justice.

Alexis Rinck

Alexis Mercedes Rinck (she/her) is a policy analyst focused on human services, affordable housing, and public health on the local level. Originally from California, she briefly lived in upstate New York while getting her degrees in political science and sociology and from Syracuse University. Her focus within these majors is in human rights and critical race theory which paired well for her internship with Human Right Institute La Fundacion Henry Dunant in Santiago, Chile. A feminist and activist, Alexis has organized protests, teach-ins, sit-ins, demonstrations and panel discussions on varying topics from Indigenous sovereignty, environmental protection, nutritional access, money in politics and the prison industrial compex, to fighting against Trump's Muslim travel ban, the repeal of TPS, children and family separation and inhumane conditions in detention centers, police brutality and structural racism, and wealthy inequality. Queer and biracial, Alexis believes that the personal is political, and tries her best to live true these values and be an example of what a feminist life can look like. Currently, she volunteers with Seattle Homeless Outreach and organizes the Seattle Chapter of Veggie Mijas, a plant-based folks of color collective. Alexis also has an MPA from the UW Evans School of Public Policy and is a 2021 Jackson Leadership Fellow. Note: This board member does not participate in endorsements for King County candidates.

Yazmin Mehdi

Yazmin Mehdi spent 18 years in public policy and public service, most recently as Interim District Director for Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal. She brings over 25 years of experience in facilitating staff and non-profit board teams to identify and realize strategic priorities. At Congresswoman Jayapal’s office, she led a staff of six to identify constituent priorities and find ways to address these needs through federal legislation, resources, and attention. In her work in non-profits, she led the board of Town Hall to launch a $25-million capital project and fundraising effort, now completed; evaluated options for new funding for parks and recreation while on the Parks Board which led to creation and passage of the Seattle Park District, a sustainable funding source; and, co-chaired the initial phase of a capital campaign for University Prep. At the City of Seattle, she expanded the Library’s programs to serve the growing immigrant and refugee population; re-set Mayor Paul Schell’s relationship with the arts community through identification of a new funding source for the arts; and, successfully led the move of the Central Library to temporary quarters and back to the Koolhaas-designed structure. In 2007, she helped start Crosscut, a source for local journalism. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Social Studies from Harvard University and a Master of Public Policy from the University of Michigan.