Page S. Gardner is the president and founder of PSG Consulting. PSG Consulting offers strategic services to nonprofits, advocacy organizations, campaigns and other private-sector clients. As a service to its clients and others, the firm hosts the First Mondays Webinar series, which convenes an array of emerging and established voices to discuss critical issues facing our democracy. View the First Mondays series here: www.psgconsulting.com/webinars.
Gardner has founded a number of groundbreaking organizations, the most recent of which is Innovating for the Public Good: R&D for Democracy (IFPG). IFPG is a nonprofit organization that is a center for innovation. It is committed to identifying, testing, scaling and resourcing innovations that protect democracy and counter rising autocracy, from idea to adoption. IFPG works to radically reimagine democracy’s future — addressing the underlying threats to democracy and serving as a laboratory for long-term transformation that breaks down silos and unleashes breakthrough solutions to revitalize America’s democratic promise.
Additionally, Gardner founded and was the president of the Voter Participation Center (VPC), formerly Women’s Voices Women Vote, and the Center for Voter Information (CVI), formerly Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund — WVWVAF. Together, VPC and CVI developed new ways to enfranchise and empower historically underrepresented groups, including unmarried women, African Americans, Hispanics and other people of color, and young people. Under Gardner’s leadership, VPC and CVI led the way in terms of innovations in the civic space, developing metrics-based program evaluations, model building, and new voter registration, turnout and advocacy strategies.
Gardner is also known for discovering the “marriage gap,” research that demonstrated the causal relationship of marital status in explaining the profound differences between the voter registration, participation and voting patterns of married and unmarried women. Her work established marital status as a key determinant of whether and how one votes. In recognition of her research accomplishments promoting voter registration and turnout, Gardner received a prestigious award from the American Political Science Association in 2020.
Before founding VPC and CVI, Gardner worked at senior levels for several of the most competitive national, statewide and congressional campaigns in the country. She also managed issues and communications campaigns on some of the most heatedly debated public policy questions facing the nation. She is a nationally known political strategist and communications specialist who has written articles for many publications and has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, PBS and NPR.
To learn more about Gardner’s work, visit www.psgconsulting.com and www.innovatingforpublicgood.org.
