Featured Alumna: Lisa Conn '06

Featured Alumna: Lisa Conn '06
If you’ve tweeted about the presidential election, there’s a good chance your tweet has crossed the path of Lisa Conn (’06). An MBA student at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Conn also works on The Electome, a data analytics project that studies trends in the election narrative among the candidates, the media and the public. Using a complex algorithm, The Electome reviews some 500 million daily tweets, extracts those relevant to the election, and classifies them according to which candidate is mentioned, the tone of the tweet, and the issues discussed.

“The idea of the project is to fuel what we call ‘the horse race of ideas,’” Conn said. “Election coverage has become more and more like sports coverage—it’s all about who’s winning and who’s losing, and not about what’s being fought over. If we’re not talking about issues and having a rich discussion about policy, it’s not good for democracy.”

The Electome, which is part of the MIT Media Lab, aims to enrich the discussion. In addition to analyzing tweets, it tracks news from media partners and shares its data with journalists as well as the Commission on Presidential Debates. For example, Conn said a Washington Post poll last spring found the economy to be voters’ #1 issue, but their Twitter analysis showed it to be #18.  “What that tells us is not that polling is wrong and Twitter is right,” Conn said, “but that there’s more nuance and complexity to the issues that people care about.”

The Electome also tracked how President Donald Trump’s candidacy has changed the language surrounding immigration issues, in part by looking at usage of the words “undocumented” and “illegal,” which Conn says “really describe the same group of people with different political undertones.”  The data was used for a story on the cable network Fusion.  

Immigration is of particular interest to Conn, who prior to starting the MBA program worked on immigration reform issues for the bipartisan advocacy group FWD.us. Conn’s career path was inspired in part by her grandmother, who was a desegregation activist in Virginia during the Civil Rights era. While a student at New York University in 2007, Conn was invited to hear then-presidential candidate Barack Obama speak in Washington Square Park. “It was a deeply moving experience that stuck with me for a long time,” she said.

After her 2010 college graduation, “I kept thinking about that moment in Washington Square Park and my grandmother’s history,” Conn said. So she scrapped plans to go to law school and instead worked first on a congressional campaign in Los Angeles, and then as a regional organizer for the Obama reelection campaign, ultimately in the battleground state of Florida. There, she managed a team of 40 organizers who helped register some 50,000 voters and turn out hundreds of thousands of voters for Obama. Her team’s efforts were integral to Obama’s victory in the region and the state.

Although she wasn’t a political activist at Sage Hill, Conn was definitely a doer. She says her first real management experience was as co-president of Sage Hill’s mock trial team. She claims she wasn’t very good, but the experience taught her the impact of performance—whether in a courtroom, in an election, or in any other arena—on people’s emotions and opinions. Also at Sage Hill, Conn founded a chapter of the Jeremiah Society, providing weekly creative outlets for developmentally disabled adults and organizing fundraisers to support a residential facility. Through these experiences, she learned to lean on her own personal strengths, and to lean on community to augment her skills to have an impact.

“I believe in the power of people,” she said. “There’s nothing that people working together with a shared passion and a shared vision can’t do.”

Conn advises other Sage Hill graduates to pursue their areas of strength and enjoyment, rather than following what seems like the “right” path. “Really keeping track of what we like, what we don’t like, how we operate best, what we’re good at, what makes people respond to us best—that’s the key to success and ultimately the key to happiness.”  It’s safe to say Conn has found the key to her own success and happiness. After the election, she will complete her MBA and take a position as a government and politics strategist with Facebook. 
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