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Green Party Bio for Kevin Colton

Green Party of Canada

Calgary

· Founding member and CEO of the Calgary Centre Green Party Electoral District Assocation (EDA).

· Chair of the Greens of Southern Alberta (GSA), a group with representatives from regional EDAs who are collectively working to coordinate activities and increase Green support in southern Alberta.

Election 2006

· Helped coordinate the overall GPC election campaign as Chair and council representative on the 2006 Federal Campaign Committee.

· Chaired twice-weekly FCC meetings, prepared agendas and minutes for these meetings and developed and maintained a project plan for our election activities.

· Worked with federal and provincial Green Party leaders to draft and distribute a Green Party New Year's message from our Canadian leadership.

Election 2004

· Coordinated our successful 2004 election campaign effort to run a full slate of 308 candidates and become only the 4th political party in Canada to ever run a full slate of candidates.

· Worked to hire and coordinate the day-to-day work of 30 organizing team staff members and volunteers doing candidate recruitment and registration.

· As a member of the Federal Campaign Committee participated in twice-weekly campaign meetings to plan our overall election strategy and manage day-to-day election activities.

· Facilitated good communications by chairing dozens of organizing meetings, maintaining a web page for organizers and candidates, coordinating translation work, managing several email lists and sending regular bulletins to candidates, staff and council.

· Worked with staff and volunteers to establish an election infrastructure, including work to establish and maintain the budget for the organizing team, develop procedural documents, develop a candidate database, maintain parts of the GPC website and so on.

· Coordinated our election post-mortem work and helped transition some of our contract staff into full-time employee positions after our 4.3% election result earned the party over $1 million per year in federal funding.

GPC Council

· First appointed (and later elected) to council as Organizing Chair in November 2003. Re-elected as Organizing Chair in August 2004. Finished second in the election for GPC Party Chair in August 2006.

· Member of various teams that helped council transition from a working council (where councillors did the day-to-day work to manage the party) to a governing council (where councillors provide direction to our staff members who are doing this day-to-day work).

· Worked to develop a list of tasks to help council better identify, prioritize and monitor party operations.

· Wrote a handbook for new councillors.

· Regularly attended council meetings, made motions when necessary, helped lead council workshops at our in-person meetings and participated in other decision-making activities.

Other GPC Work

· Wrote an essay "The Simple-5 - Roadmaps to Green Party Success" which analyzes what the party needs to do to win Parliament by 2020.

· Championed the 1/3 revenue sharing plan for our federal funding and made a presentation on behalf of council at the August 2004 General Meeting.

Other Green Parties

Green Party of Alberta

· Ran as a candidate in the November 2004 provincial election, winning 5.5% of the vote in the Calgary-Montrose riding.

Green Party of British Columbia

· Elected to the Green Party of BC council in June 2003 as a Director-at-Large. Served on council and regularly participated in meetings, fundraising events, etc. until I moved to Calgary at the end of that year.

· Founded a provincial constituency association in the downtown Vancouver riding of Vancouver-Burrard in early 2003.

· Helped the CA double its membership base from 30 to 60 and increase our contact list to over 100 by holding regular monthly meetings, setting up speaking events for GPBC and GPC leaders, doing regular mainstreeting and flyering, coordinating GPBC partipication in anti-war and Pride parades, etc.

· Helped to found a regional group to coordinate the activities and foster the growth of Vancouver-area CAs.

· Wrote a comprehensive manual for GPBC council and members that pulled together a variety of information to help new CAs build healthy organizations.

Nebraska Green Party

· First started volunteering with the Green Party as a campaign volunteer for the Nebraska Green Party Congressional candidate while living in Omaha in 2002.

· Helped with the campaign by developing the campaign website, dropping off flyers, mainstreeting, participating in parades, doing get-out-the-vote calling and so on.

Professional

· Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of New Brunswick.

· Have worked as an employee or contractor for Intel, Nortel, Motorola, NEC, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, primarily doing software development for cell phones and other wireless and telecommunications equipment.

· Founded my own company to develop training and testing software for the telecommunications industry. The technical innovations in the software earned funding from the National Research Council and other government programs.