Editor’s note: This is part of a series profiling six of the Seattle region’s “Uncommon Thinkers”: inventors, scientists, technologists and entrepreneurs transforming industries and driving positive change in the world. They will be recognized at the GeekWire Gala on Dec. 6. Uncommon Thinkers is presented in partnership with Greater Seattle Partners. Read the other profiles here.
In a time fraught with political discord and cynicism, Poppy MacDonald is a champion for the shining ideal of democracy — namely a government that’s striving to improve the lives of its citizens.
“Citizens can only make a decision about [whether] the government is serving me,” she said, “if they have access to transparent information about what is happening.”
As president at USAFacts, a nonpartisan clearinghouse of federal, state and local government data, MacDonald is working to provide that information, whether it’s trends in firearm deaths, changes in U.S. lifespans, or foreign aid.
The not-for-profit offers insights into current events and an annual data-driven “State of the Union” report. In partnership with the University of California, Berkeley, the organization recently launched a recurring nine-week data analysis bootcamp that’s free to U.S. congressional staff members. Last year it created America’s Midterm Map, an interactive site for voters researching candidates for local and federal races, which helped USAFacts land on Fast Company’s list of 10 most innovative nonprofits of 2023.
Before USAFacts, MacDonald was president of Politico USA, a news media company focused on policy and politics. She also led the National Journal and was a lead partner with the analytics and polling company Gallup. MacDonald’s early roles were in communications for two U.S. lawmakers.
“Poppy has been instrumental at USAFacts, fostering an environment where facts are paramount and data drives our narrative.”
– Steve Ballmer, USAFacts founder and former Microsoft CEO
While MacDonald spent a long stretch of her career in Washington, D.C., and Virginia, she’s originally from Salem, Ore. One key reason for taking the role at USAFacts was to get back to the Pacific Northwest. It has been a transition from the cocktail parties, award galas and political celebrity sightings in the nation’s capitol, but a welcome one.
“It really has become about embracing the time with family, the nature, the beauty of the Northwest that I really missed — and still getting to have a really positive impact on democracy in this country,” she said.
MacDonald took the helm of USAFacts in 2018. Under her leadership, the Bellevue, Wash.-based organization has seen significant growth. Over the past year, it doubled the number of users coming to the site. It increased almost 20-fold the number of newsletter subscribers since the organization started.
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who founded USAFacts and funds the effort, calls MacDonald “a catalyst for positive change.”
“Poppy has been instrumental at USAFacts, fostering an environment where facts are paramount and data drives our narrative,” Ballmer said by email. “Her approach to data in these divisive times is both refreshing and essential.”
MacDonald also led the organization through an unexpected role during the pandemic.
When COVID-19 emerged in the U.S. in early 2020, there wasn’t a system in place to compile daily updates from local communities to track the virus’ spread. So the Trump administration contacted USAFacts to serve as the official source providing infection data to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It was a serious undertaking that required on-the-fly problem solving, including phone calls to chase down data irregularities and hunting for infection information on the Facebook pages of random local agencies.
“It was an enormous responsibility and a privilege,” MacDonald said. “And we were on calls to [former] Vice President Pence’s chief of staff and Dr. Deborah Birx [the former White House COVID response coordinator] every night if they had questions about what they were seeing in the data.”
Another success was building a female-dominated leadership team in a field where 80% of data scientists are male. In addition to MacDonald, USAFacts has female chiefs of technology, marketing and product.
The 47-person organization overall is demographically diverse, MacDonald said, including racial, ethnic, socioeconomic and political differences.
“That’s really important to us as we’re providing this data to the American people,” she said. “We have a diverse group around the table looking at that data.”
