Mandana Dayani on What's Motivating Millennial Voters

In 2018, Mandana Dayani watched as the family-separation policy played out at the southern border. It was deeply unsettling. Her family fled as refugees from Iran to the US as an authoritarian regime took over. She asked herself: how could a country that saved my life do this? Mandana quickly learned that civic engagement was the only way things could meaningfully change. Enter: I am a voter., Mandana's org that’s on a mission to rebrand voter identity to get young people to the polls. 

 In this episode of 9 to 5ish, Mandana shares: 

• The culture shock of being a refugee in the US

• How she went from being a lawyer to a brand strategist to the  co-founder of a political org

• Advice that the founder of Mom’s Demand Action, Shannon Watts, gave her when starting the org (spoiler alert: women get sh*t done)

• How trust in existing brands and celebrities jumpstarted I am a voter. 

PS: If you want to learn more about how to get civically engaged, visit I am a voter.

On Tapping a Group of Women to Start I am a voter.

Mandana: Women are amazing. I remember when we started I am a voter. and my instinct immediately then was to call the smartest woman that I knew. Shannon Watts was my hero and the woman I looked up to more than anybody. And, I had asked, “Hey, is it weird that I'm starting this thing and we're all a bunch of women?” And she was like, “Mandana, if you want to get shit done, give it to women.” That was really how she started Mom's Demand Action and so I've had this conversation so much. There's so much that we do every day in balancing our lives, our careers, our homes and our children and all of the things that all apply to all of these different jobs. There are so many things that women do all the time that, to me, are invaluable in so many different scenarios.

On the Strategy of Meeting Voters Where They’re Already At

Mandana: I'm never going to be able to build an Instagram handle with I am a voter. that's going to be able to get as many people as we would need to see that. But if we work with the NBA and we work with the NFL and we work with all of the amazing brands, NBC, ABC, etcetera: those audiences are already there. They already have trust with those brands or those platforms. So if those platforms can provide the resources and the information, then we are breaking through to where we know the audiences are already going to be. We know that we're providing them the information that they need and the access. So I think we've leaned a lot on the platforms and places where audiences are going to be because we think that, we know that the trust is there and because we know that we are less susceptible to a lot of the misinformation.

On How to Handle Misinformation Leading Up to the Election

Mandana: It's really sources. You just have to be very mindful about where you are getting your information from and to actually not just go by headlines, but to dig deeper and really understand the issues and the impacts of them. Be really thoughtful about where you're about what you're putting out into the universe and what you're re sharing, because I think the last thing you also want to do is contribute to the sharing of misinformation.