Who We Are

Board of Directors

Richard S. Sloan

Rick Sloan has led the Union of Unemployed since its launch in January 2010. He served as the Communications Director for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers from 2000 to 2012. Rick founded Challenge America, Inc., a strategic thinking firm that worked with labor unions between 1985 and 2000.

Rick is the author of A Gift of Strategy. He has served as chief of staff to the late Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-OH) and Congressman John D. Dingell (D-MI). In 1984 he challenged then freshman Congressman John Kasich, and lost in the Reagan landslide.

 

LaToya Egwuekwe

LaToya Egwuekwe has served as a Union of Unemployed (UCubed) Communications Representative since its launch in January 2010. She currently works for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, UCubed’s former parent organization.

Egwuekwe is the creator of “The Decline: The Geography of a Recession,” an animated map that shows the progression of U.S. unemployment from January 2007 to February 2011. Her work has been featured on CNN, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, The Huffington Post, BoingBoing and hundreds of blogs, local newspapers and television outlets around the world.

Prior to joining the labor movement, Egwuekwe worked as a political television reporter/anchor for The Florida Channel in Tallahassee, FL, and as a television news producer for WEWS-TV in Cleveland, OH. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Broadcast Journalism from Hampton University in Hampton, VA, and a Master of Arts in Interactive Journalism from American University, in Washington, DC.

 

Glenn Totten

Glenn Totten is the president of Totten Communications, a full service media consulting firm, located in Alexandria, Virginia. He has enjoyed a long and successful career advising professional organizations, business groups, trade associations, as well as candidates and political parties across America and around the globe.

For the past 18 years, his company has focused on public policy issues and has established an enviable record of winning ballot initiatives and referenda campaigns. His organizational clients range from the Academy of Florida Trial Lawyers and the Connecticut Association of Healthcare Facilities, to Churchill Downs, the Minnesota Transportation Alliance, as well as the International Association of Machinist & Aerospace Workers and the Service Employees International Union.

Totten has also served as an instructor for the National Democratic Institute, a USAID sponsored global democracy project. Prior to his consulting career, Totten was a television producer and commentator in Boston, Massachusetts, where he produced and hosted a nightly news magazine along with other public affairs programming.

 

Patrick S. Halley

Patrick S. Halley is the author of On the Road with Hillary (Viking, 2002), Wimpy (Kelly Press, 2008), and Guide Dogs of America, A History (Kelly Press, 2012).

Pat Halley spent nine years doing advance for Hillary Rodham Clinton. He was Executive Director of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, and worked as an advance man or state director in six presidential campaigns. Prior to that Mr. Halley had a career in law enforcement, serving as Chief of Operations for both the Attorney General of Massachusetts and the Middlesex County District Attorney.

 

Ian Lurie

Ian Lurie is CEO and founder of Portent, an internet marketing agency that has provided internet marketing, including search, social and analytics services, since 1995.

He recently co-published the 2nd edition of the Web Marketing All in One Desk Reference for Dummies and wrote the sections on SEO, blogging, social media and web analytics. He also recently wrote The Social Candidacy. He writes regularly for the Portent Blog and Search Engine Land, and has been published on AllThingsD, Forbes.com and TechCrunch.

His random educational background includes a B.A. in History from UC San Diego and a degree in Law from UCLA. Along the way, he’s been an amateur competitive cyclist, a bike messenger, a roof consultant, a technical writer and an Adobe FrameMaker consultant. You may find him teaching his kids to play D&D on the weekends, or dragging his tongue on the ground as he pedals his way up Seattle’s ridiculously steep hills.