Washington, D.C. – The Center for American Progress Action Fund today announced that Bill Burton will join the organization as a Senior Fellow. Burton will work with CAP Action’s policy and communication teams to elevate progressive ideas to the center of the national policy debate. In his role, Burton will work to expand the reach of the organization’s wide-ranging issue campaigns with a particular focus on lifting up solutions to poverty and hunger and combatting conservative misinformation about the poor. Burton will also be serving as a Senior Fellow for CAP Action’s sister organization, the Center for American Progress.
“Bill brings a decade of experience successfully advancing the cause of basic fairness for all Americans and an economy that grows from the middle out,” said Tom Perriello, President and CEO of CAP Action . “We are thrilled to have Bill join our team. The passion and wisdom he has gained from consistently challenging the media, candidates, and leaders in Washington to care about facts and about fairness will have an incredible impact on our work.”
“The Center for American Progress and the CAP Action Fund have been critical institutions for the progressive movement in Washington and I am proud to be a part of an organization for which I have so much respect and admiration,” said Bill Burton. “Tom Periello and Neera Tanden have assembled some of the best and brightest in Washington to advance some of the most important causes our nation faces and I couldn’t be more proud to be a part of their teams.”
As he takes on this new role, Burton will continue to serve as executive vice president and managing director at the Global Strategy Group. Before joining the Global Strategy Group, he was most recently a co-founder and senior strategist for Priorities USA Action, the super PAC dedicated to the 2012 re-election of President Barack Obama.
Burton was one of the first hires on President Obama’s first presidential campaign, where he was national press secretary. He then served in the Obama administration as deputy press secretary and special assistant to the president at the White House. In that capacity, Burton traveled extensively, both domestically and internationally, with the president, briefing reporters both on Air Force One and at the podium in the White House briefing room.
During the 2006 electoral cycle, Burton worked as Rahm Emanuel’s communications director at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Before that, Burton served as a communications advisor to Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-MO), Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Tom Harkin (D-IA), and others.
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