Anthony Fauci’s daughter Alison works for a company advising progressive activists on community organizing and fundraising that is partnered with groups campaigning to increase the number of Americans receiving COVID-19 vaccines.
The daughter of the White House Chief Medical Advisor joined the company, the Empower Project, as a Senior Software Engineer in May 2022 following a seven-year stint at Twitter.
The Empower Project boasts of its "training + technology + funding model" that it uses "to share organizing best practices and offer advice to progressive organizations and nonprofits."
"Our approach helps organizations activate, build, and expand their activist bases and organizational reach on a meaningful scale," continues the company, which also has a non-profit spin-off known as "Empower Fund" that distributes grants to other progressive advocacy groups.
An area of significant interest for the company appears to be the promotion of COVID-19 vaccines.
The fund has a robust "Promoting Vaccine Education, Access and Equity” initiative which seeks to increase the number of people receiving COVID-19 vaccines, especially among "hard to reach" demographics.
To do so, the fund leverages its resources to "provide people and organizations with the tools (both personal and technological) to identify trusted messengers within a target audience; enlist volunteers in the service of a cause; cultivate contact lists; and, ultimately, organize and mobilize their family, friends and neighbors into agents of change."
Among the group's partners used to promote COVID-19 vaccines are state health departments.
The Empower Fund's “Get Well Wisconsin” initiative, for example, is run in partnership with the state's Department of Health Services "to promote vaccine acceptance."
Among the tactics the Empower Fund has revealed it is using for the pro-COVID-19 vaccine effort are:
- "Providing Relational Organizing support (coaching, software, and grants) specific to COVID-19 vaccinations to our current partnerships so they can incorporate it into their existing outreach programs. This approach would allow groups to utilize infrastructure that is already in place, particularly in Communities of Color, and "hit the ground running" with relational vaccine messaging."
- "Supporting all other interested partner organizations to provide a Relational Organizing wraparound to their programs with coaching and software."
- "Expand our online-to-offline volunteer recruitment operation so that we can directly enlist COVID-19 vaccination advocates in targeted geographic areas that might not be reached by partnerships or where partners need help building up volunteer capacity."
The Empower Fund’s initiative appears to be behind an effort to text Wisconsin residents to inform them that they could be eligible for a $100 reward card from the state if they received a COVID-19 shot.
The Empower Project is also offering grants to organizations in Wisconsin "who wish to engage in a Relational Organizing program around vaccine access, education and equity."
Among the uses for the grant listed by the Empower Project is combatting vaccine "misinformation":
"With this grant, your team will be able to fund a successful operation that battles misinformation, and most importantly provides valuable facts on how we can boost vaccination numbers."
The Empower Project also highlights its partnership with the left-wing group CASA in Action as a case study for the "training" aspect of the company.
"CASA in Action: Getting loved ones vaccinated through 'Health Promoters," summarized a post on the Empower Project's website highlighting its collaboration to support COVID-19 vaccine drives:
"This summer, our friends at CASA have been hard at work rolling out vaccines to their communities. Working primarily in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, they have mobilized thousands of Latino community members into signing up at nearby locations and getting vaccinated."
CASA In Action's work pushing the COVID-19 vaccine was highlighted by NPR, which praised the group in its article "Health Promoters Help Latinos Get Vaccinated Against COVID-19."
Beyond pushing COVID-19 vaccines on Americans, the Empower Project has also partnered with over 1,000 left-wing activist groups and non-profits including Black Voters Matter, the "Green New Deal"-supporting Sunrise Movement, Planned Parenthood, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Several of the organizations working with the Empower Fund are funded by George Soros's Open Society Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Another partner of the Empower Project is the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which is the official "organization dedicated to electing Democrats to statehouses" in addition to state offshoots of the Democratic Party.
The AFL-CIO, America's largest federation of unions, and nearly a dozen of its state-level branches are also listed as partners of the Empower Project. The federation has pushed for all of its members to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
Similar to Alison Fauci's employment at Twitter, which has censored users for sharing posts criticizing her father, her newfound role appears to pose a conflict of interest given her family's deep ties to the development of the COVID-19 vaccine.
