Decision Desk HQ Welcomes Award-Winning Data Journalist Derek Willis To Advisory Board

August 26, 2024- Leading election results provider Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ) is pleased to announce that award-winning data journalist and computational journalism lecturer Derek Willis is joining its advisory board.

For the past three years, Derek has worked with DDHQ as the author of our weekly “Your Election Spotlight” newsletter (230,000 subscribers) while lecturing on data and computational journalism at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. Previously, Derek spent 25 years at the forefront of data journalism for ProPublica, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Center for Public Integrity, Congressional Quarterly, and the Palm Beach Post, winning awards from the Knight Foundation and top journalism associations for his work while also lecturing at Georgetown University, George Washington University, American University and Northwestern University, among others.?

“Derek has been a trusted advisor to DDHQ and played a critical role in building our audience for the past three years, so we’re grateful that we’ll continue to benefit from his expertise in presenting our data accurately in clear, compelling ways,” said Decision Desk HQ Chief Data Scientist Scott Tranter. “With the board we’ve got, we couldn’t be better advised heading into the most politically and technologically fraught election in modern US history.”

Derek joins DDHQ’s four sitting Advisory Board members:?

• Jon Cohen, Founder and CEO of Truedot.ai , the professional-grade data collection platform; former Chief Research Officer and SVP of Strategic Partnerships at SurveyMonkey; and the first Vice President of Research at the Pew Research Center and Director of Polling for The Washington Post.?
• Katie Harbath, Chief Global Affairs Officer at Duco ; former Director of Public Policy for Global Elections at Facebook; former senior digital strategist at the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee; author of Substack newsletter Anchor Change ; and host of podcast Impossible Tradeoffs .
• Molly Levinson, widely recognized as one of the top advisors in crisis and issues management and litigation support communications in the United States; founder and CEO of top issues management advisory The Levinson Group (TLG); and Emmy-award winning former producer and Political Director at CNN and CBS.
• Elizabeth Wilner, Head of Polling & Insights at AI company and ChatGPT creator OpenAI; previously Director of Corporate & Policy Communications at Airbnb; Political Director of NBC News; and Managing Editor of The Cook Political Report (now The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter).

About Decision Desk HQ

Decision Desk HQ is a leading provider of real-time election results, race calls, and related data, and the only provider to cover US elections from the presidency and Congress to the county and city level. Launched in 2012 on a hunch that we could use technology to improve the speed and lower the cost of collecting election returns, we were first to call the presidency for Donald Trump in 2016 and for Vice President Joe Biden in 2020. In 2022, we were first to call control of Congress and also covered 16,000 local races. We continue to innovate with new technologies to drive more efficient results reporting that prioritizes accuracy, supports local coverage, and strengthens trust in the democratic process.

Contact:

Drew McCoy

[email protected]