I'm Shane Reisman. I run VoterForce, a precinct intelligence product for California campaigns, and I serve on the Lafayette Parks, Trails, and Recreation Commission. The consulting work and the civic work share a home here at theregional.io.
The practice came together over a few years of doing political data work for Bay Area campaigns alongside local history and parks projects in the town I live in. Both come from the same conviction: that the most consequential decisions about a place — a precinct of 1,200 voters, or a neighborhood deciding what to remember about its past — happen closest to the ground, and benefit from being taken seriously there.
Before founding the practice, I spent most of a career in congressional affairs, political campaigns, and management consulting. Stints at Booz Allen Hamilton, Slalom, and IBM Global Business Services taught me how large organizations actually buy data work, and where the gap is between what's promised and what's delivered. The practice is what fills that gap for the campaigns and civic organizations I serve.
In 2024 I ran for the East Bay Regional Park District Board of Directors in a competitive open-seat race. That experience — being on the receiving end of a campaign rather than the operating end of one — changed how I think about voter contact, field strategy, and the small decisions that decide close races. Most of what's in VoterForce traces back to questions I had as a candidate that nobody on my side could answer.
The civic work runs parallel and overlaps. I'm the creator of the Lafayette-Moraga History Trail, a twelve-panel interpretive walking tour along the Lafayette-Moraga Regional Trail, installing in June 2026 as the trail turns fifty. The Burton Valley History Project — a StoryMap about the never-built freeway corridor that would have run through Oakland's Shepherd Canyon — came out of the same line of curiosity about how places remember themselves.
I live in Lafayette with my family. Most weeks include time on the regional trail and at least one Lafayette city meeting.
