A recent addition to our leading web talent, Remy Messa comes to Vox from places like Noodle and Etsy. As the Chief Product Officer at Vox Media, she leads the team that develops Chorus, the Vox content management system, that delivers news and other content to millions of readers around the world.

Prior to dipping her toes in the startup world, Remy spent several years living in the technological side of local and national politics, first starting at Blue State Digital, and eventually moving to work on Houdini, Project Narwhal, and Project Gordon with President Obama's 2008 and 2012 campaigns. She navigated more than her fair share of red tape while working with the New York State Senate and the New York City Public Advocate. In her spare time, Remy teaches at The Recurse Center, formerly known as Etsy's Hacker School, and volunteers with Girls Who Code. She studied computer science at Barnard College.

Remy has spoken at TEDxBarnardCollege, TEDxColumbia, SXSW, General Assembly, and several other conferences. She hails from San Diego, California, and is on a never-ending quest to find a decent basket of carne asada fries in New York City.

Q&A

How did you end up so involved in the political sphere?

I had been a systems administrator for a couple of years and was trying to find my footing after college. I ended up joining a great team at Blue State Digital, a digital strategy agency, right as Obama's first presidential campaign was kicking off. They had just been hired to create a platform for the Obama team. There was a lot of excitement about the work that BSD was doing at the time, since this was the first time technology was being used to engage people and activate voters in such a large scale. So I spent some time at BSD and then got looped into working with some of the Obama technologists. They needed another data head at the time and I fit the bill.

What made you decide to join us in the world of start-ups?

Working on political campaigns is intense and exhausting. I wanted to move away from that but still do work for the greater good, and I ended up working on a couple projects with different government agencies. That had its own challenges, and after a couple of years, I decided that I was ready to move on. Most of my career prior to that had revolved around large amounts of data, so I leveraged that as a way out of the public sector and into Etsy.

You do a lot of projects on the side. Do you have any favorites?

Any time I get a chance to work with Girls Who Code is a good day. I've spent a lot of time at fat cat FAB LAB, a hackerspace over in the West Village, and sometimes I'll teach a class or two there.

Why carne asada fries?

Why not?