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Nicholson to leave Progress Missouri for GPS Impact

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Sean Nicholson, executive director and founder of Progress Missouri, announced last week that he will leave his brainchild for a position with GPS Impact, a campaign communications firm.

“I really enjoyed the work at Progress Missouri, we’ve got a great team in place now, and I’m excited about a new adventure and some new challenges,” he said. “I’ve been friends with Jim [Kottmeyer] and Roy [Temple] and people on their team for a long time. The more we got to talking, the more it seemed like now was a good time to join their efforts. The planets aligned.”

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Sean Nicholson

Since 2011, Progress Missouri has acted as a liberal and progressive advocacy group with a focus on ethics reform. Nicholson has spearheaded multiple filings with the Missouri Ethics Commission about relations between lobbyists and lawmakers, earning both allies and enemies along the way while being a thorn in the side of the state’s high-level conservatives.

“We’ve been able to step into the vacuum and emphasize the leaders and policy proposals that do good things for the state, and we’ve shone a light on some of the more ridiculous behavior in Jefferson City and around the state,” Nicholson said. “I’m really proud of the work we’ve done here.”

Kevin Garner, the communications director for Progress Missouri, believes Nicholson’s efforts to expose those relationships and the money changing hands has changed the conversation in a state that has a lax, laissez-faire attitude when it comes to political funding.

“No other organization has really analyzed or collected the data, but really Sean has led the effort to make it more accessible to people and as a result, there’s more and more conversation among the legislators and the voters in terms of reforming our ethics systems,” Garner said.

“Sean has really built an organization that has moved the conversation in the state of Missouri,” he continued. “He has done something that a lot of people have been deterred from doing and that is taking up progressive causes in the state.”