Hunkered down at a corner table at a Kaladi Brothers in East Anchorage on Monday, technology strategist Mark Jablonowski had the air of a harried student. Jablonowski, the founder and chief executive of the Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm Rogue Global Solutions, was sore and tired after a weekend of extreme sledding in the Chugach Range. He was wrapping up one project and still had to put the finishing touches on a mid-week presentation for the Anchorage chapter of the Association of Information Technology Professionals.
The 2006 Service High School graduate kicked off 2009 as the chief technology officer for the Presidential Inaugural Committee, the culmination of two years on the Obama campaign. Now he is back in his home state visiting friends and family, as well as doing a little skiing.
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Mark Jablonowski's AITP presentation will cover his experiences with the Obama campaign. It runs from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 6 at the Petroleum Club. Cost: $27 (includes dinner) for the general public. |
At 22 years old, Jablonowski has taken an unconventional approach to his career, determined from an early age to do what he wants. Bill Corbett, Service High School's technology coordinator, remembers Jablonowski as a freshman walking into the technology office and saying, "You need me to work for you." Corbett found a teacher's aide position for Jablonowski, and during his years at Service he went from cleaning computer keyboards to helping upgrade the school's computer network and setting its computer policy. "He transformed from being the student that's always bugging you to do stuff to being an integral part of the office," Corbett says.
After one year at Colby College in Maine, he got involved with the Obama campaign. He joined Colby Students for Obama the day the Illinois senator announced his run for the White House. After spending the summer knocking on doors in New Hampshire as an intern, the campaign hired him to run the state's IT operation. He then chased the Obama-Clinton primary battle across the country, finally ending up in Chicago for the general election.
Obama's presidential bid "was fundamentally a different way of running a campaign," Jablonowski says. "Where normally the messaging people in the campaign would want to say, 'Let's put a lot more money into TV, let's put a lot more money into print ads, direct mail, robo-calls,' from the very top down we decided to put a lot of resources into our online presence. I don't think anyone would disagree that it paid off."
Jablonowski enjoys his private sector work. An avid skier, he hopes to develop an application to allow downhill skiers to track and rate runs. Still, he doesn't rule out a return to national politics. "I'm not so much interested in technology itself," he says. "I'm very interested in the social change you can affect with technology. That's where the political interest comes in."
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Silent film clip of men in Seward, Alaska, pouring barrels of alcohol into the street and breaking bottles of liquor during Prohibition. From the Alaska Film Archives.
