The Team
Maria Teresa Kumar Named by Hispanic Magazine as one of the top Latinas in Government and Politics, Maria Teresa Kumar is a founding principal of FastFWD Group. She is also the founding Executive Director of Voto Latino, a leading national civic engagement organization targeting acculturated American Latino youth. In the 2008 presidential election, Voto Latino leveraged social media and celebrity participation in five battleground states, all of which saw Latino voter participation increase 5% or more above the national average.
Voto Latino’s innovative web initiatives – including a tele-novela spoof that became an internet sensation – won two Webby Official Honoree awards and a MySpace Impact award. Voto Latino’s benefit album produced with Apple iTunes during the 2008 election was the top selling album on iTunes Latino for weeks.
Maria Teresa serves as a Political Commentator for MSNBC. During the 2008 election cycle, Maria Teresa was a regular commentator during MSNBC’s primary and general election night coverage. She was also a frequent guest on CNN’s AC 360 and American Morning, NPR, Telemundo and MSNBC’s Hardball.
Maria Teresa started her career as a Legislative Aide for former Democratic Caucus Chairman Vic Fazio managing international trade issues and appropriations. She’s counseled Fortune 500 companies on political strategy, and as a principal at FastFWD Group, she’s advised clients including: Levis, Planned Parenthood, AMC and Michael Moore. Harvard Law School, NetRoots, Personal Democracy Forum, and Tide’s Momentum are among the organizations that seek her to speak on social entrepreneurship, technology and electoral politics.
Maria Teresa is an Ambassador Swanee Hunt Prime Mover Fellow, a Women’s Media Center Fellow and a Woodrow Wilson Public Policy International Affairs Fellow. She is a recipient of numerous leadership awards including from The White House Project, Imagen Foundation and the New York Legislature. This year, Washington Life magazine placed Maria Teresa on the cover of their issue highlighting the most influential Washingtonians under 40. She serves as a founding board member for both the Latino Leaders Network and Poder PAC. Maria Teresa received a masters degree in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a bachelors degree in international relations from the University California at Davis. A native of Sonoma, California, Maria Teresa lives in Washington, DC with her husband, Raj.
Lee Brenner is a founding principal at FastFWD Group. Lee is also the Publisher and Co-Founder of HyperVocal, an online magazine written for, and by, the Facebook Generation. Lee was previously the Political Director & Executive Producer of Political & Non-Profit Engagement Programming at MySpace. As such, he directed all political, civic and social engagement marketing activities for the social portal.
As a social media expert, he has appeared regularly on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and has been featured in a plethora of print publications, radio and blogs, commenting on the state of youth culture and the “new world” of online social/civic engagement and activism. At the request of the State Department, he was recently sent to South Korea to speak to political and media leaders, along with leading educators, about the role social media is playing in journalism, politics and cultural revolutions throughout the world.
Throughout his tenure at MySpace, Lee developed partnerships with NBC News, FOX News, and many other major news providers, as well as continually counseled business, faith, political and non-profit leaders on the “best practices” for online marketing and fundraising campaigns. Brenner executive produced the series of 2007-08 MySpace/MTV Presidential Dialogues. Brenner also forged the landmark 2008 partnership between MySpace and the Commission on Presidential Debates and has been the Internet Adviser to the Commission.
Prior to joining MySpace, Brenner was Senior Editorial Producer of CNN’s “Late Edition w/ Wolf Blitzer.” Brenner also produced “American Morning” and “NewsNight w/ Aaron Brown” during his time at CNN. He is a graduate of Tufts University and received a Masters of International Affairs at the University of Hong Kong, having won a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholarship. Lee is on the Board of Advisors of WhyTuesday?, a non-partisan, 501(c)(3) organization founded in 2005 to find solutions to increase voter turnout and participation in elections. Lee also sits on the Steering Committee for the 1869 Society of the Corcoran Gallery. A Chicago native, Lee lives in Washington, DC and dreams of deep-dish pizza (His Twitter handle is @deepdishpol).
