Celinda LakeSpeaker and Booking Agent Information

Lake is one of the nations foremost experts on electing women candidates and on framing issues to women voters. American Politics calls Lake a super-strategist or, better yet, the Godmother, and Working Woman says she is arguably the most influential woman in her field. She is renowned for her groundbreaking research on single women voters in conjunction with Womens Voices Women Vote and has helped elect numerous female candidates, including Barbara Mikulski, the Dean of Women Senators, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, Blanche Lincoln, U.S. Senator from Arkansas, Mary Landrieu, the first woman Senator from the South elected in her own right, Patricia Madrid the first Hispanic woman Attorney General in New Mexico, and the historic victory of Carol Moseley-Braun, who was the first African-American woman to be elected to the United States Senate. She also works for Nancy Pelosi, the first female Speaker of the House.

In 2006, Lake served as pollster for Jon Tester, who won an upset primary win and went on to defeat incumbent Senator Conrad Burns. This built on a long record of defeating incumbents, including Jerry McNerney who beat Richard Pombo, Tim Walz who defeated Gil Gutknecht, and previously Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow and West Virginia Governor Bob Wise, both of whom beat incumbents. In 2006, Lake was the pollster for the largest 527 in the House races that helped Democrats and progressives take back the House. Lake Research Partners has a long history in successful initiative campaigns. In 2006, Lake Research Partners helped with successful minimum wage campaigns in five states and was the pollster on the first successful effort to beat a gay marriage initiative in Arizona. In the 1992 election cycle, Lake oversaw focus group research for the ClintonGore campaign and served as a general consultant throughout the campaign. An experienced moderator, she is also credited with identifying key voter groups, including Reagan seniors, NASCAR dads, waitress moms, the marriage gap and generation D. In 2005 she published with Kellyanne Conway What Women Really Want by Free Press.

Prior to forming Lake Research Partners, Lake was partner and vice president at Greenberg-Lake. Her earlier experience includes serving as political director of the Womens Campaign Fund, and as the Research Director at the Institute for Social Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Policy Analyst for the Subcommittee on Select Education.

Lake, a native of Montana and one of the political worlds most avid whitewater rafters, holds a Masters degree in Political Science and Survey Research from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and a certificate in political science from the University of Geneva, in Geneva, Switzerland. Lake received her undergraduate degree from Smith College in Massachusetts, where she graduated Summa Cum Laude with honors and was recently awarded the Distinguished Alumna Medal by the College.