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About
We answer the question: "How do we reach our next goal?"
There are many tools organizations can use to make change, but often we look backward and use a tool that was useful in the past without considering whether it works for the current problem.
This is true of actions, campaigns, and systems – any tool we use to move us toward our goals. Realizing that your tool is yielding diminishing returns is easy. Often, you can feel it in your gut. The hard part is Designing something new and more effective.
Look through our past and current projects. You'll see a wide range of campaigns and tools – from neighborhood to state to international, from direct actions to games to city planning. The common thread is that the solution fits the problem. We work with our partners to design tools that work for them.
The Action Mill Team
Jethro Heiko is an organizer, artist and activist from Newton, Massachusetts. Following the death of his father, he founded and ran REFLECT, the 5-college bereavement support program for college students. He worked for Boston’s Fenway CDC for seven years organizing the successful effort to renovate rather than demolish Fenway Park. Since moving to Philadelphia in 2003, he has been working on affordable housing, urban planning, tenant rights, and casinos. He was the Organizing Director for Iraq Veterans Against the War and the National Organizer and co-founder of Turn Your Back on Bush. He is a founder of Neighbors Allied for the Best Riverfront and of Casino-Free Philadelphia. He is Director of the Department for the Investigation of Metaphorical Agency in the Think Tank that is yet to be named. Jethro lives with his wife Chelsea and daughter Hazel.
Nick Jehlen is a writer and designer from Somerville, Massachusetts. After completing a degree in human factors engineering, Nick began designing and building tools to allow activists to take more effective direct action, including image projections, parody websites, building banners and mass mobilizations. Nick was co-founder of Turn Your Back on Bush and is currently lead organizer of the Enough Fear campaign, which sets up public phone hotlines between the US and Iran and is building tools to facilitate large-scale citizen diplomacy. Watch Nick's keynote from the 2008 Grassroots Use of Technology conference here.
Meredith Warner is an artist, activist, and educator from Philadelphia. She has a Masters in Fine Arts and teaches at several Philadelphia universities. In 2006, Meredith was one of the founders of NABR (Neighbors Allied for the Best Riverfront), an organization that advocates for sustainable development along the Delaware River. In the same year, she helped found Casino-Free Philadelphia. As part of her artistic practice, Meredith is the Director of Department of Investigation of Neutrality and Palatability of the Think Tank that is yet to be named (in other words, she creates bureaucracies to undermine bureaucracies).
Jeremy Beaudry is an artist, designer, educator, and activist from Philadelphia. Through social media projects, site-specific curatorial and creative work, and activism around issues of land use and urban development, he engages a variety of audiences from diverse fields and communities. In early 2008 he was an artist-in-residence at Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum in Alexandria, Egypt as part of the U.S. Department of State Cultural Envoy program. As Director of the Department for the Investigation of Meaning in the Think Tank that has yet to be named, he has publicly exhibited and presented a range of socially-engaged projects in both national and international venues. Jeremy is a Professor in Multimedia at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
Katie Hargrave is an artist, activist and devoted learner from Chicago. She is trained in visual arts and cultural anthropology, and she uses the tools of both these disciplines critically in her work. Katie relies on careful research and collaboration with community members and organizations. She is a project manager of the Davis Square Tiles Project and hopes to create a model of investigation into gentrification through infrastructure and public artwork.
Rob Peagler has spent over 15 years innovating new ways for people to work and think together creatively, productively and with principle. Before joining Action Mill Rob was a senior consultant with Matter LLC, an Atlanta, Georgia design-driven strategy consulting firm. At Matter he focused on that firm’s multi-stakeholder social value creation projects including collaborators such as the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the State of Georgia’s Department of Economic Development and Georgia Tech’s Experimental Game Lab. Prior to his work with Matter, he had a fellowship with MIT’s Center for Reflective Community Practice. Building on that work, Rob co-founded the Design Studio for Social Intervention where he provided guidance in applying design thinking to the resolution of intractable social problems. His previous employers and clients have included the Market Analysis & Strategy Group at IBM Research, Steelcase Inc.’s Advanced Concept Research and Design unit, the Cynefin Centre for Organizational Complexity (now Cognitive Edge, LLC), Razorfish Inc., and Seasons Fund for Social Transformation.
