Mediaboss Marketing

Name: Progressive Insurance

President & CEO: Tricia Griffith

Address of local operation: 6300 Wilson Mills Road, Mayfield Village, OH 44143

What the company does: Progressives vision is to be their customers No. 1 choice and destination for auto and other insurance. As their customers lives change and evolve, including purchasing a home, buying a boat or motorcycle, Progressive wants to be there to provide the protection and service they can count on. Progressive has many career paths you might not expect at an insurance companylike software developers and systems engineerswho along with customer care professionals drives them forward as a growing and evolving company.

Years in business: Founded in 1937

Why they won:

Progressive is committed to providing their employees with an environment that makes them feel welcomed, valued, safe, and respected. They live these values, they arent just posted on a wall. Because of this, employees are more engaged, inspired and interactive with both their colleagues and the company. Progressive also offers employees many opportunities to grow and thrive with the company.

We grew stronger once the pandemic hit. We knew it was important for us to translate the Progressive employee experience and our culture to those who have been with us for decades, and to those who havent set foot in one of our buildings. Part of keeping our culture thriving and connected included regular video updates from our CEO Tricia Griffith, and ongoing communications from our Chief Medical Officer to answer FAQs about the pandemic. Weve also kept our employees engaged via virtual company-wide events, such as Inclusion Week which was hosted by our Employee Resource Groups. --Neil Lenane, business leader of talent acquisition.

Progressives growth has put us on a multi-year hiring spree, so weve been well-positioned for this job market. As of May 9, 2022, we have about 1,600 positions open across the U.S. in sales, customer service, claims, IT, analytics and more. --Lenane

Said one employee: I am able to do what I love every day. I am consistently given personal development opportunities. My team is supportive of each other and work together to further team and personal goals. Said another employee, I am constantly being challenged, I am constantly learning, if I have an issue with something work related, I feel comfortable to speak to my direct supervisor about it. People of power (i.e higher management) dont make you feel that you cannot talk to them, it is truly an open-door policy, ideas are welcome, there is a balance with work/life especially even more so with the current COVID conditions, I have the flexibility to work and am also able to take care of my home as well. I can openly talk to my supervisor without feeling it will directly affect my job or my relationship within the organization. The list goes on. I truly love working at Progressive.

For the 2022 Top Workplaces list, cleveland.com and the Plain Dealer have compiled 220 stand-out Northeast Ohio employers based on employee surveys. This year weve focused on employee retention in the face of staffing shortages. Find the full list and stories on the top three winners in each category at cleveland.com/top-workplaces.

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Progressive Insurance is 3rd-place winner, Large category: Top Workplaces 2022 - cleveland.com

(New York Jewish Week) Emily Mayers path to becoming the director of the Progressive Caucus of New Yorks City Council ran through a Jewish day school and a Jewish summer camp.

For Mayer, her new job squarely aligns with the values shes embraced her entire life, which she described as a commitment to social justice, which was alongside a commitment to Judaism.

And yet one destination along that path has made the 30-year-old controversial in some Jewish circles: In 2014, she co-founded the Jewish activist group IfNotNow, which calls for the U.S. government to end its support of what it calls Israels system of apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza.

The groups intense criticism of the Israeli occupation has drawn a devoted cohort of young Jewish leftists while also rankling a Jewish mainstream that regards pro-Israel activism as a core Jewish value.

Whether Mayer brings that background to the City Council will be closely watched by the Jewish establishment in New York, home to the largest Jewish community in the country. Some right-wing critics have already bristled at her appointment: Former Assembly member Dov Hikind told the New York Post her hiring was an embarrassment because of her left-wing activism on Israel.

But Brooklyn Council member and Progressive Caucus co-chair Lincoln Restler, who is Jewish, said in a statement to the New York Jewish Week that Mayer is the right person for the job.

Emily is a talented and dedicated organizer who has a history of building grassroots movements and coalitions that are rooted in care and justice, Restler said.

He added: Emilys job is focused on transforming municipal government, not international affairs.

Another Jewish fan is City Comptroller Brad Lander, who created the Progressive Caucus in 2010 and officiated at Mayers recent wedding to Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid. He said that she will be a huge asset to the work of the Progressive Caucus to be a force for policy changes to help working families in New York.

Bronx Rep. Jamaal Bowman took part in the wedding of Emily Mayer and Waleed Shahid on May 14 in Coxsackie, N.Y. (Credit: Justine Castle)

As for her background in fighting for Palestinian rights in Israel, that is not directly related to the work of the Progressive Caucus, said Lander, adding that her work towards ending the occupation, and equality and safety for Israelis and Palestinians alike, is fully within the range of Jewish and progressive perspectives on Israel/Palestine.

For her part, Mayer declined to get into specifics of her job, which she began only three weeks ago. Among the caucus top concerns, she said, are housing, the climate crisis, homelessness and gun violence.

Still, she acknowledged, 2022 is different than 2016. Palestinian rights have made a lot of cultural headway in the last six years. And progressives are clear that progressive values mean standing up for the rights of both Palestinians and Israelis. That is actually part of what being a progressive means in 2022.

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In a phone interview last week, Mayer said her progressive values were formed at Camp Gilboa in Los Angeles, a summer camp under the umbrella of Habonim, the left-wing Zionist movement. Thats really the beginning of my journey, said Mayer, whose maternal grandparents fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s. My camp counselors were always quite progressive for the most part. I grew up learning about the occupation. That was never really hidden from me.

In 2014, at the age of 22, Mayer became the camps director. That same summer, Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, a military incursion into Gaza launched by Israel following the murder of three Israeli teenagers by Hamas-affiliated terrorists. More than 2,100 Palestinians were killed that summer in the Gaza Strip, as well as 66 Israeli soldiers and seven civilians.

These events thrust her into a position to discuss the war and its effects with the campers and staff, many of whom had family in Israel.

I was planning this activity day with a Muslim summer camp nearby, Mayer recalled. They said that because of the war, a lot of their kids dont feel safe necessarily coming to a summer camp where we were flying Israeli flags.

Mayer added that she felt torn about how the war in Israel was affecting her in California and realized that what was happening in Israel was a huge injustice that was endangering both the lives of Palestinians and Israeli Jews.

After that summer, Mayer said she didnt want to be involved in Jewish institutional life anymore.

There were thousands of American Jews supporting the war and standing in these huge rallies, she said. I came out of that experience feeling frustrated and disillusioned.

Instead, she took a job as a community organizer in Philadelphia for a student group called Student Power PA, which focused on engaging underserved communities and vulnerable working families in the community.

This was when the seeds of IfNotNow took root, as Mayer and other Jewish friends from Habonim felt that they needed a political home to register their despair about not only what was happening in Israel and Palestine, but what we were seeing with our family members and community members and how they were supporting violence.

Mayer said she was invited to a strategy session in New York by a group of people who called themselves, almost haphazardly, IfNotNow a reference to a famous quote by the rabbinic sage Hillel: If I am not for myself, who is for me? But if I am for my own self only, what am I? And if not now, when?

I met people there who were the first young Jewish people I had met who were committed to making the Jewish community stand by the values we were all taught as young people, but also really had a plan to do it, Mayer said. It honestly changed the rest of my life.

She added that Jewish values are about changing the world and standing up for the oppressed, values she said are contradicted by what has been taking place in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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It was deeply felt that if we could build an organization that could visualize the discontent and a different vision for the Jewish community, we could bring along our family members and community members and older generations of American Jews with us, Mayer said.

Mayer also said that IfNotNow encapsulated an entire generation of Jews who traveled to Israel and felt that what was happening there was contradicting their Jewish values. We started to build a new political identity of young Jews, who deeply believe that the safety of Jews was intertwined with the safety of Palestinians, she said.

For the first few years, IfNotNows activities consisted of protests and rallies. Members recited prayers in front of offices of organizations like the Anti-Defamation League, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and others. In 2016, Mayer herself was arrested for holding a liberation seder in the ADLs office lobby.

Emily Mayer at an IfNotNow Liberation Seder in 2016. (Facebook/Gili Getz)

In 2018, however, Mayer felt that IfNotNow needed to move in a more political direction, in order to match pro-Israel groups, who had long poured campaign donations and political capital into electing pro-Israel lawmakers and defeating Israels critics, on their own turf.

We saw ways that the Jewish establishment was going to fight The Squad to make sure that they didnt extend their progressive values to Israel and Palestine, Mayer said, referring to six of the House of Representatives most progressive lawmakers. The winds of Congress remain on the side of a blank check to Israel.

IfNotNow began endorsing candidates, most notably Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, as well as progressive Democrats like Reps. Jamaal Bowman, Alex Morse and Mike Siegel. Two of its endorses, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, are considered Israels fiercest critics in Congress.

I came to the realization that not only can we speak truth to power, but we can actually put people who are committed to the movement of progressive values in office, Mayer said. This was a very important movement for the progressive movement and for IfNotNow.

The ADL has criticized IfNotNow for preferring unrealistic ultimatums over meaningful discussion, and, in criticizing the ADL for complicity in human rights abuses, ignoring ADLs advocacy for a two-state solution. Mainstream Jewish groups are also put off by the groups neutral stance on Zionism and statehood a stance that, if not anti-Zionist, is far from the robust support of an independent Jewish state held by nearly all large Jewish groups. For some groups, IfNotNows noncommittal stance on a sovereign Jewish state enables antisemitism.

Shahid, Mayers husband, also recently came under fire for a tweet commenting on how a pro-Israel PAC had boosted a candidate. Wait until you hear what happened next in next weeks Goy Outsider, the since-deleted tweet said, riffing off the name of the politics-oriented newsletter Jewish Insider.

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt then responded to the tweet, Daily reminder that the extreme right & radical left overlap like a Venn diagram around antisemitism, Greenblatt said.

A letter signed by 47 progressive Jews, including Lander, said that the ADL wrongfully equated the progressive movement with violent white supremacists and equated Waleeds lighthearted joke with the actions of violent far-right extremists in Buffalo and Pittsburgh.

Shahid declined to comment for this article, but Mayer said it was revealing how the ADL responded to her husbands tweet. Its no secret that the Jewish establishment is funding or supporting primary challengers to progressive candidates, Mayer said. Theyre very scared about what kind of change a person like [New Yorks Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] could bring to the Democratic Party on the issue of Israel and Palestine.

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An ADL spokesperson said in a statement to the New York Jewish Week that the organization fights antisemitism from wherever the source.

Sometimes that angers people because it means ADL needs to call out their friends, the spokesperson said. We stand by our decades-long record fighting antisemitism and battling for equal justice for all.

Mayer emphasized that she is not ignoring antisemitism, saying that it is still deeply embedded in our society.

Its a scarier time to be a Jew in America than ever before in my lifetime, Mayer said. Its incumbent on Jews to lead the fight against antisemitism, but that requires us to be precise and judicious about what antisemitism is.

In her new role, Mayer will work with 34 Council members who are part of the Progressive Caucus. While the New York Post article cites an unnamed caucus member calling Mayers hiring a mistake, she said that the leadership of the caucus has been extremely supportive.

Ive had really warm interactions thus far with a wide variety of staffers from the office, Mayer said.

While Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul tend to be moderates, Mayer said the large number of progressive members in the Council show that the city is going through a transformation.

Theres a lot of work to do, Mayer said. There is a responsibility for progressives to strategize together to figure out what we can win. I feel very humbled and honored to get to work on these issues.

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How Emily Mayer went from IfNotNow leader to head of NYCs Progressive Caucus - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Ana Maria Archila at a NYC rally protesting the Supreme Court's abortion ruling on June 25, 2022 Photo by Gili Getz

By Jacob KornbluhJune 26, 2022

The Supreme Court abortion ruling on Friday drew mass nationwide protests, with Democrats hoping it would mobilize voters to the polls in the midterm elections. For Ana Maria Archila, an ally of progressive Jewish activists and candidate for lieutenant governor of New York, the call to action could be put to test in Tuesdays Democratic primaries.

Archila, 43, gained national attention in 2018 when she confronted then-Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona, in an elevator to protest the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was facing allegations of sexual assault. I knew that this is the day that we were trying to prevent when we were trying to push back against the nomination of Kavanaugh, Archila said in an interview on Friday.

She said that she knew at the time that Sens. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, and Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, were misled when Kavanaugh assured them that he would not end the landmark 1973 decision to protect the right to an abortion to secure their votes.

Archila said that while the ruling was demoralizing, it is an opportunity to turn her fear into action and invited people to turn their pain into efforts to protect one another and to make sure that we show our outrage on election day.

We can see the light at the end of the tunnel that we can force our elected leaders, who always act as if the worst thing would never happen, to take our concerns seriously, she added.

Even before the Supreme Court decision was made public, Archila saw growing momentum in a close race against Antonio Delgado, the newly appointed lieutenant governor and Gov. Kathy Hochuls running mate. She was chosen as the running mate of Jumaane Williams, the New York City Public Advocate, who is challenging Hochul from the left. In New York, lieutenant governors run on their own in primaries and as a joint ticket with the gubernatorial nominee in the general elections. While Hochul has a commanding lead over her primary rivals, progressives are hoping to score a win for the second-in-command position.

Archila was recently endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who invited her to the State of the Union as her guest in 2019.

She is also backed by Ady Barkan, a prominent Jewish liberal activist who was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrigs disease. Archila, who is an immigrant from Colombia, said Barkan embodies the values of the progressive tradition and suggested that her campaign theme of fighting for a more just society and building a multiracial alliance where every single community feels welcome and represented is central to the progressive Jewish tradition, a vision of interdependence.

The two met in 2010 when Barkan joined Make the Road New York, a grassroots immigration-led organization, as an attorney. Archila was co-executive director along with Andrew Friedman, who is also Jewish. Barkan and Archila became close friends and also worked together at the Center for Popular Democracy, which she headed before running for office. In our conversations, we always talked about the interconnectedness of our struggles, she said.

Barkan, who himself confronted Flake in 2017 on a plane from Washington, D.C. over the GOP tax reform bill, was also very active in the fight against Kavanaughs confirmation.

Archila recalled the attacks by former President Donald Trump, who came under fire for invoking an antisemitic dog whistle by claiming Jewish billionaire George Soros was behind the protests. Trump was also seeking to rally his base by flirting with conspiracy theories about the Democrats being behind the arrival of caravans with migrants from Central America.

That is the antisemitic, patriarchal, white supremacist ideology that Trump very effortlessly connected in his political discourse and used to agitate people, she said, adding that the deadly shooting at the Tree of life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, which occurred a few weeks after the Kavanaugh protests, was proof that these attacks could have deadly consequences.

Archila said that if she wins the Democratic primary she will partner with Hochul, who could face a tough re-election bid in the fall against Rep. Lee Zeldin, the possible Republican nominee, and boost her campaign by energizing the base and bringing them to the polls.

The Jewish Vote, formed in 2018 by leaders of Jews For Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ), recently held a pickles to the polls rally in Brooklyn to get out the vote for Archila and other progressive candidates.

Jacob Kornbluh is the Forwards senior political reporter. Follow him on Twitter @jacobkornbluh or email kornbluh@forward.com.

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Activist Ana Maria Archila is running for lieutenant governor of New York with the help of progressive Jews - Forward

It was special election day for voters in Anchorages newly redrawn and expanded North Anchorage assembly district on Tuesday.

With the early results, the mainstream progressive candidate Daniel Vollandwho came into the race with endorsements from several prominent progressive and Democratic elected officialshas a commanding lead over a field that includes repeat conservative candidate Stephanie Taylor and progressive Tasha Hotch.

With 3,801 votes counted (a 10.37% turnout, so far), the race results break down as follows:

The election adds a 12th member to the Anchorage Assembly following the voter-approved plan to equalize the representation among the six assembly districts. Previously, the Downtown Anchorage assembly district had only one assemblymember (Christopher Constant) while other districts were stuck with only one. The change coincided with the citys reapportionment process, which saw the downtown district expand and reach into East Anchorage. The change saw Taylor, who ran against Forrest Dunbar for the East Anchorage seat, move into the North Anchorage seat.

There was concern among progressive circles that Taylor, who had Dunbar sweating a bit despite his eventual 13.3-point margin of victory, could capitalize on a race where the progressive vote would be split between Volland and Hotch. While both Volland and Hotch had strong results, the districts underlying electorate is strongly progressive, and it appears that its representation will continue to reflect that.

If Vollands margin of victory holds, the Anchorage Assemblys core of moderates and progressives would be back to nine members. The core lost one member in the spring elections when South Anchorage Assemblymember John Weddleton lost to far-right conservative Randy Sulte, who has aligned himself with the far-right Eagle River assemblymembers to form a three-member group.

A core of nine members would give the Anchorage Assembly one vote to spare on overrides of far-right Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronsons vetoes as well as the power to override vetoes of emergency ordinances (as was the case with the masking mandate last year). Veto overrides require 2/3 of the Anchorage Assemblys membership, which is eight members under both an 11- and 12-member assembly. Veto overrides of emergency measures requires 3/4 of the Assembly, which is nine members under both an 11- and 12-member assembly.

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Progressive Volland leads in Anchorage special election, which will add 12th seat to assembly - The Midnight Sun

Zachary Parker wasnt up against a Green Team incumbent in Ward 5, but in many other other respects, his convincing primary win sure feels a lot like the one Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George pulled off two years ago.

In both cases, most politicos were expecting things to come down to the wire; instead, both won handily. The candidates themselves arent so different either: young, Black, and generally outspoken about their left leanings. Lewis George even endorsed Parker, one of just a few sitting elected officials to do so.

And perhaps most crucially, both benefited from a small army of volunteers from D.C.s coterie of left-leaning groups, such as D.C. for Democracy, a constellation of labor unions, and the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. The latter group alone says its 60 volunteers knocked on a total of 40,000 doors for Parker since late Januaryfor context, theres about 53,300 registered Democrats in the entire ward, per elections officials latest estimates. Loose Lips is beginning to suspect theyve found a model for winning ward races thats replicable.

DSA has a very focused strategy and its clearly a smart one, says Zach Teutsch, who helped manage Lewis Georges 2020 bid and supported Parker this time around. They knew that if they could knock 30,000 to 40,000 doors it would be the difference in the race, and they were correct.

Its difficult to see what else couldve helped Parker win so decisively. The candidates all raised pretty similar amounts of money via the citys public financing program, so its not as if Parker had some huge cash advantage.

It wasnt exactly a weak field either: Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie bowed out, but proven Ward 5 vote-getter Vincent Orange was in the race (for full disclosure, Orange is suing LL for defamation over several past articles). Gordon-Andrew Fletcher and Faith Gibson Hubbard have deep ties in community organizing there, too, and Gibson Hubbard specifically had the benefit of McDuffies backing (and the implicit support of Mayor Muriel Bowsers administration).

Yet Parker won in a walk anyway, with his race one of the first called on election night (he beat second-place finisher Gibson Hubbard by more than 18 points, according to preliminary results). Parker himself says his message of bringing change to Ward 5 plainly resonated with voters and put him over the top, but the on-the-ground organization was probably just as important.

Tom Lindenfeld, a longtime political strategist in the city whos run organizing efforts for both Bowser and Adrian Fenty, suspects that Parkers success in lining up that much volunteer support was the decisive factor. He rejects the notion that most voters care much about the moderate-progressive divide among D.C. Democrats, arguing that if a candidate can present as an advocate on issues people care about (and then reach people with that message at the doors) they dont need a rigid ideology to win votes. Hes no great fan of the Democratic Socialists, per se, but does suspect theyre embracing the right tactics.

Theres a reason why progressive people win: Theres a lot more of them knocking on doors, Lindenfeld says. If mail turned out voters, we wouldve had a million people voting. Mailboxes were filled everyday in wards with competitive races. But it was the canvassing that got people to come out.

Of course, Teutsch cautions that those volunteers wouldnt have come out with such zeal had Parker not won them over with his extremely clear support for issues that lefty groups care about. He wasnt wishy washy, Teutsch says, so organizers were actually energized to devote so many weekends to hitting the doors for Parker. DSA, for instance, saw a clear example of a candidate who would fight to create social housing, defend Initiative 82 and expand worker protections, invest in alternatives to policing, and raise taxes on the rich to fund housing and early childcare and was inspired to support him, the groups 11-member steering committee writes in a joint statement to LL.

He doesnt shy away from his values, but works really hard to find common understanding with people, says Ed Lazere, an early supporter of Parker who helped him build credibility among progressives. And its pretty clear he occupied a progressive lane by himself, while the other candidates were swimming together in much murkier waters.

The real question for D.C. politicos is whether these tactics can work elsewhere. Progressives pulled off these wins in two very different wards, so theres reason to believe it could happen again. What happens, for instance, if Ward 7 Councilmember Vince Gray decides to retire when his term expires in 2024 and sets off an open-seat contest there?

DSAs steering committee argues that its last two victories were valuable not only for adding Parker and Lewis George to the Council but for building the power necessary to win a harder race next time. Knocking a bunch of doors is never enoughmaking sure you can knock more next time is just as important, the committee writes.

But can this success translate citywide? Progressives were heartened by Parkers big win (alongside apparent victories by Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau and Matt Frumin in Ward 3) but the races for mayor, Council chair, and the at-large seat were all disappointments. Lazere himself has seen how hard it is for a lefty candidate to win citywide, having lost races for chair and a different at-large seat in consecutive cycles.

Part of the problem for lefty groups is winning over poorer voters, particularly those living east of the river. Ari Theresa, an Anacostia activist and lawyer who backed Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon Whites mayoral bid, observed on Twitter that the citys old guard was still very successful in precincts below the citys median income.

If progressives are for all D.C., lower income voters did not appear to believe it, Theresa says in a tweet.

But Teutsch notes that the margins of victory for Bowser, Chairman Phil Mendelson, and At-Large Councilmember Anita Bonds all declined compared to four years ago (including those in wards 7 and 8). Lindenfeld agrees, seeing it as perfectly possible to run a progressive, citywide campaign based on door-to-door organizing with enough dedication. That strategy was a big part of Fentys success back in 2006, he notes.

The DSA certainly seems eager to try someday, arguing in its statement to LL that this ward-level work is part of a strategy that gets DSA into a position to win things like the mayors office down the line.

By focusing on the ward-level race this cycle, we were able to talk to the same voters multiple times, build trust with them, and make it clear that Zachary was the people-powered candidate, the steering committee writes. Were looking forward to eventually making that case again for DSA candidates citywide.

Lazere and Teutsch both say that such an effort would really require finding the right person for progressives to back up with this organizing muscle. There arent any obvious answers just yet (maybe Lewis George someday, should she win again in 2024?) but recent success has them ready to start looking.

It will not be that progressive organizations can anoint a candidate thats going to win, Lazere says. It needs to be someone connected to the community, period. If that person does emerge, if there are people who have those deep community connections and the energy to connect with voters, I just think theres a huge opportunity for a victory.

This article has been updated to correct the number of members on Metro DC-DSAs steering committee.

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Zachary Parker Delivered Another Win for Progressive Organizers in Ward 5. Can They Keep Repeating This Success? - Washington City Paper