Author: /u/eudemonist

Some of you may remember there was some hubbub earlier this year over an $11 million contract for “Vaccine Outreach & Awareness”. The contract, paid from Federal grant monies, was awarded to Elevate Strategies, LLC, a single-member partnership formed less than two years prior, with no real assets or infrastructure to speak of and which operated out of the apartment of founder/owner/lone employee Felicity Pereyra. Ms. Pereyra had spent the last ten years electioneering for differerent D politicians and was, until very recently, Director of Data for the Democratic National Committee. Many redditors insisted this was completely normal, and to just go look at the RFP on the county site….except it wasn’t there. Ever. It simply did not go through the normal channels. This made me extra curious, so I did some digging.

This RFP was released by the county on February 5th, 2021. The original schedule called for any questions to be lodged by the 15th and the contract to be awarded by the 22nd, seventeen days after release of the RFP. But instead of being posted publicly, where all the other RFPs go, only a select few folk were informed of the request. Luckily, I was able to dig up who all WAS informed of the RFP and given the opportunity to, um, P. There were fourteen separate contacts informed of the Request, some with more than one individual listed. I did some surface research on each of the fourteen contacted, and I wanted to share what I found with r/houston because I love y’all, and source documentation.

So, here it is–the complete list of entities informed of the availability of the eleven million dollar Federal grant for vaccine outreach:

1. Ginny Goldman, “Self Employed Progressive Political Strategist”, former Exec. Dir. of the Social Transformation Project and Texas Organizing Project
2. Andy Love of Data in Place, former Deputy Data Director of the Democratic Party of Virginia
3. Suratha Elango, a primary care pediatrician and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Baylor.
4. Frances Valdez and Ana MacNaught of Houston in Action, which “organized data, strategy and systems for a coordinated campaign across area community groups to register and mobilize voters under-reached voters of color during the historic 2020 elections” and was founded by Valdez, who “previously had a 13-year career as an immigration attorney, advocacy and policy advisor, director, and civic engagement coordinator within the immigrant rights movement.”
5. Chrishelle Palay, Houston Organizing Movement for Equity Coalition and writer for Salon
6. Celeste Peterson of Texas Organizing Project, which spent over $2 million supporting Democratic candidates in 2020
7. Zenobia Lai and Katy Atkiss of the Houston Immigration Law Center, which focuses on, unsurprisingly, immigration law and creating a path to citizenship
8. Jesus Davila of Landing Advisors, a “boutique” advisory firm founded in 2019, with only one other employee, an Assistant in law school.
9. Dr. Assata Richards of Sankofa Research Institute, a sociologist and adjunct professor at University of Houston who seems focused on housing-related issues and who had donated a few time (although not a large amount) to Alex Tryantaphyllis, Hidalgo’s Chief of Staff, who for some reason got to vote on this deal
10. Maria Aguirre-Borrero, who is somehow associated (?) with the Houston Arts Alliance and AvenueCDC, which does appear to be a relatively decently sized- and staffed operation, albeit focused more on real estate assistance than medical?
11. Fahad Punjwani of SUCH, a two-employee “design strategy agency” founded in 2018, with nine followers on linkedin and a now-dead-but-I-remember-it-being-weird site at theprocessissuch.com
12. Felicity Pereyra of Elevate Strategies, the eventual winner, who as mentioned worked on Democrat campaigns for the last ten years, including aspiring Texas Democratic governors, Hillary Clinton, and even the mayoral campaign of one of the Democratic Commissioners of Harris County.
13. Shekira Dennis, who founded Next Wave Consulting in September 2019 using a blind Agent service; was the Biden-Harris Campaigns Director for TX in 2020. She’d also been an organizing fellow on the Obama for Pres. campaign in Charlotte, N.C; a former White House intern in the Obama Admin; and Deputy Political Director for the Turner for Mayor campaign. Next Wave, her company, which has as its mailing address as the UPS Store in Rice Village and uses an anonymous Agent lists her address (actually both owners) as the Post Office on Almeda across from homelesstown. appears to have just been granted a $300k-$1m contract for nigh-identical outreach program in Ft. Bend County. Might be a post forthcoming about that deal, too.
14. Dr. Paula Cuccaro, a specialist in child psychology and assisant professor at U.T. Health Science Center; actually a medical professional, with some previous wins in preventative medicine previously, but not writing up a ten million dollar budget on two weeks notice–but does have U.T. Health Science backing.

The contract with Elevate Strategies has since been canceled, but since there’s an investigation underway now, I wanted to share this here. I dislike that the RFP wasn’t publicly posted and was handled via a special ad-hoc process, and it does seem there was some selection bias in who it was offered to, with a surprising number of electioneers and a surprisingly small number of health professionals on the list. I honestly don’t see a single entity, with the exception of UTHSC, that strikes me as anywhere near equipped to administer an $11 million grant.

Some other mildly interesting items: Elevate’s insurance cert is dated the day before the Commissioner’s Court voted yes (a vote conditioned on the promise that “negotiations were still to come” and performance-milestone payment scheduling, which didn’t happen) on June 8th and subsequently agreed to by Hidalgo, taking effect on July 27th; a request to transfer $10,973,000 was presented to the Commissioner’s Court the following day, July 28th.

Here’s a dropbox with all the info on the contract I’ve gotten ahold of, for y’alls perusal:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2nho6qj7m918127/AABcUmzeL6EHTaVIFPdDWwCma?dl=0