Dan Wagner

Dan Wagner served as chief analytics officer on Barack Obama's 2012 election campaign and is the founder of Civis Analytics.

Previous to Civis Analytics, Wagner worked in Chicago under David Axelrod on Obama's reelection campaign.

Eric Schmidt approached Wagner after the election regarding his algorithms and the two discussed options regarding Wagner's future and Wagner's desire to start a company that would keep together the analytics team they had built. Wagner was simultaneously being approached by nonprofit organizations with big data and that wanted to make better decisions with their data. Schmidt then became an investor and adviser to Wagner.