Buffy Wicks

She brought her brand of organizing to the 2008 Obama campaign, which she described as "built around activists, who believe in the candidate, and themselves; the volunteers are our campaign's strength and leverage."

Renew America Together

When she first joined the White House, Wicks was in charge of Obama's call for national service, now found at Service.gov. She said that it was one way to translate the energy from the 2008 presidential campaign into support for Obama's legislative agenda.

"How do we translate folks who have just been engaged in electoral politics and engage them in the process of governing, of being part of this administration in a little bit of a different way because politics is one thing and governing is something totally separate, we really saw service as a platform by which we can do that," she explained in an August 2008 conference call with artists.

NEA Controversy

Conservative critics bashed Wicks, and other members of the Obama administration, for an Aug. 10, 2009, conference call sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) -- in which Wicks participated -- that they said urged artists to create work promoting Obama's agenda. ,

Then-NEA Communications Director Yosi Sargent was forced to resign over the call and was rebuked by NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman.

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