Bachelor of Arts Candidate, Concentration: Social Studieszevshapiro@college.harvard.eduContact
Zev Shapiro has a decade of experience in progressive politics and youth engagement and is Founder and Executive Director of TurnUp - the largest and fastest growing youth-led progressive youth turnout and activism organization and mobile app. In 2020, TurnUp reached 36 million young voters nationally with voter registration and election information; texted 1 million young Georgians and spoke with 116,000 on the phone; reached each young Georgian on social media 8x in the 6 weeks before the runoff; made 17,000 connections between young activists through the TurnUp mobile app; and trained 1,600 young activists who completed over 2,000 volunteer shifts in a months long program. Youth turnout increased more than 10 points. TurnUp has over 2,000 large-dollar individual donors and foundations supporting the organization.Zev started as a community activist in fourth grade by successfully advocating for equal access to healthy food at his public school. At age nine, he launched his political path by volunteering for the senate campaigns of both Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey and served, at 10, as the campaign manager for a Cambridge, Massachusetts School Committee candidate. He has spoken to audiences ranging from small campaign gatherings to large auditoriums about the importance and power of community involvement. Zev was a featured speaker at Thrivals in Louisville, KY in 2013. At the end of 8th grade, he interned for the Chief of Staff at MA Attorney General Maura Healey’s office; at the end of 9th grade, he interned for the State Director at U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren’s office. He was Elizabeth Warren’s special guest to the State of the Union Address in 2014, and he introduced Elizabeth Warren at the 2017 Massachusetts Democratic Convention. Zev worked for three years as a leader of the Massachusetts High School Democrats and one year as their liaison to the Democratic Party. He has worked on initiatives to increase the youth audience for traditional media/news sources and has been featured on NPR, The Boston Sunday Globe, The Boston Herald, WGBH, NECN, and other television networks. Zev has also created three award winning National History Day Documentaries.Zev lives in Cambridge, MA and has two younger brothers. He is an avid cycler and tennis player, and plays the violin, viola and piano. Zev is a sophmore at Harvard.
