Who's Behind All This?

The Proponent started in 2006 when Jason Kiesel wanted an easy solution to write letters to his elected official. Jason was working with MySpace at the time and sacrificed many a nights and weekends pulling together the framework and aggregating the database that is FreedomSpeaks.com. The Proponent was spun off as a white label solution for organziations that liked the functionality of FreedomSpeaks.com, and wanted to use the API and feature set for their own tribes and communities.

Jason Kiesel
Founder, CEO & Chief Architect

Jason says he's lazy and that's why he built the platform, but after spending some time with Jason you'll quickly realize that he's a sucker for optimizing, and always looking for ways to do more with less. Jason truly is a tech entrepreneur, the nexus between business entrepreneurship and computer science, having insights around solving problems he sees in the world with practical and marketable solutions. Jason graduated with a B.S in psychobiology from UCLA.

Kurt Daradics
Co-Founder & Social Catalyst

Kurt looks at humanity through an enchanted lens where anything is possible, and somehow has the ability to not get disenchanted when things breakdown. He's a serial entrepreneur and brings an eclectic and timely point of view and set of skills and talents to the table. Kurt has always wanted to be a part of a movement and the opportunity to use The Proponent & FreedomSpeaks as a platform to shift culture through positive systemic change is what attracted Kurt to the team.

Our primary investment comes from Dale Okuno (CEO, EZ-Data). Dale has been in the software business since 1986 and brings proven, keen insight to helping scale the business quickly and elegantly. The team is fortunate to have attracted an all star board of advisors that we'll get around to publishing here soon enough. We'll let your imagination run wild for the time being.