Arena Community,

The first time I staffed a primary was as a finance assistant for then-Senator Obama in 2008.

Trying to win felt like steering an ocean liner. It’s easy to think you’re too small for the task, or that the whole political machinery is intractable. For much of the early days of that election, we were down twenty-plus points.

But when the Iowa caucus went to Senator Obama, we had proof that what we were doing was working. We were going to win. I wish I could bottle that feeling.
A lot has changed since that day twelve years ago. I was just out of college, a kid. Now, my colleagues and I from the Obama ‘08 campaign are the veterans the next generation is looking to for guidance.

It’s our responsibility to do our best to pass on what little wisdom and expertise we’ve gathered from the past decade. And that’s exactly what we — along with veterans from a host of other campaigns — do at Arena Academy.

We trained a thousand new staffers in 2019, but we can’t keep holding Arena Academies without your help. If just 10% of you give $10 tonight we’ll be able to fund scholarships for an entire Academy in one of 2020’s battleground states. Will you help make that happen?
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The Arena community has already made its mark on the 2020 election. My friend Addisu, a colleague from the Obama campaign who became Cory Booker’s Campaign Manager, calls the Academy grads he hired “superstars” because they had the skills they needed to lead from day one.

We're on every major Presidential campaign on the ballot in Iowa because our grads are great at what they do. Some will experience their first professional win tonight. I know how incredible that feels. Inevitably, some of our grads will lose; I know how that feels, too.

To our graduates on campaigns tonight: we've got your back, no matter what happens. Don't forget to enjoy the moment.

To the first win of many,

Ravi Gupta
Arena Co-Founder

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