Executive Board
The Executive Board is composed of the Walla Walla County Democrats officers. It oversees the work of the committees.
Reach out to any of the officers at their email addresses below.
Kari Isaacson
CHAIR
Kari Isaacson retired from Walla Walla’s Blue Mountain Community Foundation in the fall of 2020 after seven years. Her work there to help the people of four counties in SE Washington and NE Oregon resulted in tremendous growth in assets, scholarships, and early resources for the 2020 US Census, and helping people through the 2020 flood and early days of the pandemic.
After retirement she volunteered for the local Democratic Party as a poll watcher in the 2020 general election. She became Party Treasurer in 2021 and was elected Chair in 2022. She is a lifelong Democrat whose first political volunteering was going door to door for candidates in the 1968 presidential election in her hometown of Portland, Oregon.
She graduated from Pacific Lutheran University and University of Oregon School of Law and had a successful 40-year career in the nonprofit sector. She has raised millions of dollars over her career to help people and has supervised annual grant budgets of over $25 million at several major foundations to help children and strengthen rural economies, including Native Communities. She also worked in business, with Frank Russell Company of Tacoma and as an executive with UnitedHealth Group. She has served on numerous nonprofit boards.
Growing up in a Scandinavian and Lutheran community in Portland, she comes from a family with a strong work ethic. As a kid she worked in the fields during summers picking strawberries, raspberries, and beans, and worked through college and graduate school. Her grandparents and great-grandparents homesteaded in the Midwest in the late 1880s and early 1890s, finally selling the land 100 years later. Like all homesteaders, they worked incredibly hard and also were incredibly fortunate as immigrants from Europe to be able to participate in a government program that provided opportunity.
Mark Thompson
FIRST VICE CHAIR
Mark.Thompson@wallawallademocrats.com
Mark Thompson is the president and owner of MT Consulting located in Walla Walla, Washington.
Thompson has 25 years of risk management experience with public schools, public universities, private colleges, and private employers. He serves as a risk management specialist for employee and student relations issues such sexual harassment, discrimination, hostile work place, bullying and sexual misconduct.
Mark was a part-owner of McDonald Zaring Insurance for 30 years. Prior to that he taught school in Medford Oregon and Portland Oregon for 6 years.
A Walla Walla native he graduated from Walla Walla High School and Whitman College and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Whitman College,
Mark is past President of the Independent Insurance Agents of Washington, past president of the Christian Aid Center and currently serves on the board of Directors of Education Service District 123.
“I was born in the middle of Middle America values, in the Pacific Northwest, after the Great War (1943), into a Norwegian family with deeply conservative roots, and yet I was educated into a much larger, rapidly changing and reforming world of the 1960s and 70s.”
“Most people tend to see me as highly progressive, yet I would say I am, in fact, a values conservative and a process liberal. I believe in justice, truth, follow-through, honesty, personal and financial responsibility, faithful love, and humility — all deeply traditional values. Yet, in my view, you need to be imaginative, radical, and even countercultural to live these values at any depth.”
Amy Schwab
SECOND VICE CHAIR
Amy.Schwab@wallawallademocrats.com
Amy Schwab was elected to the non-partisan Board of Commissioners for the Port of Walla Walla, becoming the first female commissioner in the Port’s 70-year history.
Married into a family with generations-deep roots in this valley, Amy is focused on creating opportunity and sustainable economic growth for workers and business owners while preserving the special character of the Walla Walla Valley.
Amy first became involved in politics in college. Since then, she has worked on election campaigns, starting in 1996 during her first career in corporate financial services. In 2001, she moved to Walla Walla to manage an international business consulting firm and joined the Walla Walla County Democrats during the 2004 campaign.
In the depth of the Republican-induced great recession of 2009, she joined the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), first, in Washington DC leading planning for the U.S. Department of Energy’s biofuels R&D program, and then at NREL’s Colorado campus leading business development for the Pacific Northwest region and for NREL’s Strategic Energy Analysis Center. She returned to Walla Walla in 2021, working remotely until her 2022 retirement.
Amy has been a precinct committee officer for Edison Precinct since 2021 and served as Treasurer of the county party from 2021 to 2023.
Susan Todd
SECRETARY
Susan.Todd@wallawallademocrats.com
Susan Todd began her political work canvassing for George McGovern in Philadelphia in 1972. She has worked in many campaigns since and served as Events Coordinator for the Democrats in Fairbanks, Alaska, before moving to Walla Walla in 2023. She became chair of the Data Operations Committee for the Walla Walla County Democrats in 2023 and was recently appointed Secretary.
Susan was a professor of natural resource conservation at the University of Alaska Fairbanks from 1990 to 2020. She ran a Master’s Program at UAF in collaboration with the Peace Corps, where her graduate students did research in resource conservation in 15 countries. A highlight of her career was teaching resource conservation in Namibia in 2011-2012.
She hails from western Nebraska, where her father trained horses. She majored in biology at Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia and holds a Masters in Regional Planning and a PhD in Natural Resources specializing in Environmental Mediation from the University of Michigan.
Tim Copeland
TREASURER
Tim Copeland is a former executive director of the Blue Mountain Land Trust. He joined the land trust in November 2014 and retired in March 2022. His prior work experiences include service as a commercial lending officer, a bank senior vice-president and director, a certified financial planner, and the development director of a regional art museum. He was engaged in commercial banking for 15 years, was the managing director of a Walla Walla-based financial planning practice for 20 years, and directed the development operations of the Maryhill Museum of Art for over five years.
Tim holds a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Washington State University, earned a graduate degree in commercial banking from the Stonier Graduate School of Banking, and received the Certified Financial Planner designation from the College for Financial Planning.
A Walla Walla native, he lived on and helped manage the family farm for over 40 years. He has been the president of the Washington Association of Land Trusts, Walla Walla Community College Foundation, Downtown Walla Walla Foundation, Lillie Rice Center, and Exchange Club of Walla Walla, and served on the boards of several other non-profit organizations in Walla Walla.
Tim presently serves on four non-profit boards. He is a board member and secretary of the Oregon Agricultural Trust, a member of the Blues Zones Project’s Steering Committee, the treasurer and a board member of the Kirkman House Museum, and a board member and treasurer of Roots of Resilience. He is also a student at the Walla Walla Community College in its Agroecology series.
Jan Corn
STATE COMMITTEE PERSON
Jan Corn is State Committee Person for the Walla Walla County Democrats. Her involvement prior to an elected position was attending the Women’s March on Washington D.C. in 2017, Women’s Marches on Walla Walla, and Black Lives Matter rallies and vigils, and serving as an At Large Board member for Network of Exceptional Women, whose mission is to help progressive women get elected and serve on boards and commissions.
Jan has supported our local Democrats’ campaigns by phone banking, writing postcards, distributing pamphlets, and holding meet and greets. She also served as Board Member and Past President of Walla Walla Rotary, Board Member for Walla Walla Valley Chamber of Commerce, and Board Member for Community Council, and volunteered for the American Cancer Society at Providence St. Mary Medical Center. She is currently serving on the local party Elections Committee and State Elections Committee. She fervently put her feet to the activist ground when Donald Trump was elected and has become acutely aware that:
“in order for Democrats to win, there needs to be a 24-7-365 campaign operation that is registering new voters, reaching out to ‘swing’ voters, and running ads pushing the progressive message and defining Republican politicians and policies” (Dan Pfeiffer, “Untrumping America”).
Jan loves this community and country and wants to work with all our neighbors to make our lives better together.
Craig Woodard
STATE COMMITTEE PERSON
Craig Woodard moved to Walla Walla in 2021 after retiring from a long career in the construction trades.
Following a four-year electrician apprenticeship, he married Anna Woodard and settled near Palm Springs, California. He later moved closer to Los Angeles and secured a better job in the asphalt manufacturing business.
Craig was a part-time instructor at the Southern California apprenticeship training site for the International Union of Operating Engineers Local #12 for four years. He has over 44 years of experience in the trades as well as five years as a volunteer firefighter in Desert Hot Springs, California.
He has been a unionized employee his entire career and is grateful for a well-funded pension that allows him to enjoy his retirement.
Craig serves as the Walla Walla Democrats’ Secretary and is Garrison precinct's Democratic Precinct Committee Officer.
This spring, he enjoyed an acting role in the Little Theater of Walla Walla’s production of “The Shawshank Redemption.”
Jeff Strickler
CHAIR - LEGISLATIVE
DISTRICT 16
Jeff.Strickler@wallawallademocrats.com
Jeff Srickler