Anat Shenker-Osorio

Anat Shenker-Osorio is an American political strategist and messaging consultant. She is the Principal and Founder of ASO Communications, author of Don’t Buy It: The Trouble with Talking Nonsense About the Economy, and the host of the Words to Win By podcast.

Early life and education

Anat Shenker-Osorio was born in Tel-Aviv, Israel and moved to the United States with her family as a child. There, she attended high school in Madison, Wisconsin. After high school, she moved to New York City where she obtained her BA in Political Science from Columbia University in 1999.

Shenker-Osorio obtained an MA in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005.

In 2018, Shenker-Osorio was an Open Society Foundations fellow.

She lives in California with her husband and two children.

Communications career

In 2009 Shenker-Osorio founded ASO Communications, a progressive political communications firm that conducts research to improve messaging and to develop digital content, branding and campaign strategy.

In 2017 Shenker-Osorio collaborated with Heather McGee and Ian Haney López, alongside Lake Research Partners, Brilliant Corners, SEIU and Demos, to create the Race Class Narrative (RCN) project, with the goal of developing a narrative incorporating race and class that would neutralize the use of dog-whistle racism, resonate with people of color, and bring along the largest possible group of white people in support of economic and racial justice policy solutions. RCN has been utilized by various campaigns across the U.S. and is implemented by ASO Communications’ sister organization, We Make the Future.

ASO Communications co-hosts the Global Messaging Programme with the organization, NEON. Shenker-Osorio is an Advisor to the Research Collaborative.

Podcast

Shenker-Osorio is the host of the Wonder Media Network podcast Words to Win By, which profiles progressive wins from around the world and the strategies and messages used to achieve them. Seasons 1, 2 and 3 highlight winning campaigns across the United States, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, the Dominican Republic, Argentina, Costa Rica, and Brazil.

Publications

Shenker-Osorio is the author of Don’t Buy It: The Trouble with Talking Nonsense about the Economy which was published in 2012 and recommends significant changes in how progressive politicians and organizations speak about economic issues, including taxes, and makes recommendations on how to reach voters through the unapologetic presentation of simple messages that reframe the economy as a construct subject to rules and regulation.

Shenker-Osorio has authored opinion columns for such publications as Rolling Stone and the Chicago Tribune.

Presentations

Shenker-Osorio has spoken at venues such as the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Centre for Australian Progress, Irish Migrant Centre, Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation and LUSH International.

She has twice delivered keynote addresses at the Netroots Nation political convention for American progressive activists.

Media appearances

Shenker-Osorio has appeared on such television shows as MSNBC’s The Last Word and The Mehdi Hasan Show, CNN International’s Amanpour, Dan Abrams Live, and PBS News Weekend. She participated in podcasts including Our America with Julián Castro, the Ezra Klein Show, Crooked Media’s Pod Save America, The Wilderness and Political Experts React, MeidasTouch, Majority 54, The Intercept's Deconstructed, Slate's Amicus, Slate’s What Next, The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal and Daily Kos's The Downballot.