Peter Kondelis ’16 remembers the first time he heard a friend mention the name Applecart. At the time, he was unfamiliar with the Manhattan-based start-up, which develops technology that aggregates publicly available data to help political organizations mobilize voters, nonprofits fundraise, and advocacy groups lobby elected officials.
“Intrigued, I asked him to introduce me to his friends at the company,” he recounts. “While talking with one of the firm’s founders, I immediately realized that the company’s mission perfectly fit my primary interests—politics, demographics, geography, business, and big data analytics.”
He applied and interviewed and was offered a position as a political analyst, which he begins July 5. In this new job, Kondelis will be performing a number of tasks, including advising clients, identifying and researching potential new markets for its products, and further developing its proprietary social-graph technology. (Applecart’s strategic tools help target previously unexplored social networks, and their practical applications range from political campaigns to nonprofit fundraising.)
Kondelis graduated from Haverford with ample experience in data and political analysis. Last summer, he worked as a data strategist at the National Republican Congressional Committee’s Strategy Department. “At the NRCC, I devised data-driven strategies to keep and win seats in competitive districts,” he explains. Additionally, he served as a PoliticsPA’s elections analyst between 2013 and 2015, and he has been posting election results and political geography analyses on political blogs since 2011.
Kondelis majored in growth and structure of cities, Bryn Mawr’s interdisciplinary urban studies program that synthesizes his interests in geography and demographics. As a person fascinated by the relationship between people and place, he is excited that his new job will allow him to continue studying how location and demographics affect people’s behavior, their social interaction, and decision-making.
“I am thrilled to be joining a rapidly growing, cutting-edge start-up that incorporates my strongest passions right out of college,” Kondelis says.
“Where They’re Headed” is a blog series reporting on the post-collegiate plans of recent Haverford graduates.