Welcome to the Monday, December 31 Brew. The last day of 2018!
After the midterms, our staff has been busy evaluating what we did well and what we can improve heading into 2019. This got me thinking about a broader question that I posed to our team: What was your top highlight for 2018? I liked the answers so much that I wanted to share a sampling with you. We hope you had a 2018 that had far more highs than lows, and that 2019 will be your best year yet. Thanks for sticking with us this year and we’ll see you in 2019!
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The babies. SO MANY Ballotpedia babies.
- Watching my new daughter experience all of her life's firsts.
- Christopher Nelson, Project Director
- Seeing my first child on an ultrasound.
- Michael Cella, Web Developer
- We grew to a family of four with the addition of our daughter, Natalie Harper, born in September. It seems to be a trend to have midterm year babies in the Pallay household. I guess 2022 should be an exciting year!
- Geoff Pallay, Editor-in-chief
- My favorite part about 2018 - watching my smiley daughter Mia grow each month and finally celebrating her very first birthday on December 21st. What a great year it has been!
- Heidi Jung, Graphic Designer
- My favorite part of 2018 was seeing my four-year-old grandson offer a paper bag full of toy cars to his one-year-old cousin on Christmas Eve, saying, "Here. You can play with these for awhile."
- Leslie Graves, President & CEO
- I fell in love.
- Sara Key, Development cultivator
- Sharing the magic of Disneyland with my kids for the first time. The pure joy and wonder on the face of a child at Disneyland for the first time is just priceless.
- Jenna Lawrence, Donor Relations Manager
- Joining my local school board was my highlight of the year, first as an appointed member in June, and then winning election to a full term in November.
- Amanda Qualls, Director of Services
- The past few days have been lovely. My grown children were all home and we spent a few days just relaxing and enjoying each other's company.
- Margaret Kearney, Web Developer
- Work-related: Getting the widget-generated voteboxes improved election night coverage and usability tremendously.
- Marielle Bricker, staff writer
P.S.
- My work-related favorite was covering the West Virginia supreme court impeachment story.
- Sara Reynolds, staff writer
- Two words: crab racing.
- Jerrick Adams, staff writer
- Moving from Washington, DC to sunny Miami, Florida.
- Cory Eucalitto, Managing Editor
- Joining Ballotpedia as COO. Adding a new dog to my family. Officially moving back to my hometown.
- It was an election year!
- Starting my master’s degree.
- Anna Wendland, staff writer
- Three-way tie between covering marquee elections, going to New Orleans for the first time, and becoming a karaoke regular.
- Amee LaTour, staff writer
- I went to the Grand Canyon!
- Caitlin Styrsky, staff writer
- The summer internship program at Ballotpedia was a really cool taste of full-time work at a "real job" without the added stress of school—it gave me something to look forward to!
- James McAllister, assistant staff writer
- Starting my job at Ballotpedia and doing a cross-country road trip this summer!
- Sara Antel, Executive Assistant
- My family moved to Malawi for a year and got a puppy!
- Kristen Vonasek, Director of Communications
- Getting to travel around Malawi with Kristen and go on my first safari!
- Kayla Harris, Senior Communications Associate
Note from Sarah: Speaking of Malawi, three other Ballotpedia staffers (including your fearless News Editor...me!) went international in June to visit Kristen and her family.
- Seeing my favorite animals, elephants, roaming around wild on safari in Malawi. I even got to see them in the water co-mingling with Africa’s meanest: the hippos!
- Going on a two-week journey to Malawi with friends; it was my first real international trip!
- Daniel Anderson, Managing Editor
- First time traveling in international business class.
- Joel Williams, Managing Editor
- Note from Sarah: Joel left Daniel and me behind in coach
The four of us at the Lilongwe, Malawi, airport. Why’d they stick the short one, me, in the back?!
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