Our Team

Jascha Franklin-Hodge

Chief Technology Officer & Founding Partner

A BSD founding partner, Jascha brings more than a decade's experience in software development in the corporate, nonprofit, and political spheres to his role as BSD's Chief Technology Officer. He manages  the company's technology staff and operations out of BSD's technology center near downtown Boston, including our infrastructure, the maintenance and enhancement of the BSD Online Tools, and our technology client services.

For Gov. Howard Dean's groundbreaking 2004 presidential campaign, Jascha led the technology team responsible for scaling, securing, and maintaining a high-visibility, high-traffic Web site, which received praise from both the political and tech communities for its usability, reliability, and depth of functionality.

Before entering the world of politics, Jascha was the director of software development for America Online's Digital Music Division. He helped architect several cutting-edge applications including Radio@AOL, Spinner, and MusicNet, as well as the digital music player Winamp. He has also worked for the Art Technology Group and Software Tool and Die (The World), and has consulted to the Computer Museum, Andiron Press, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

Jascha studied computer science at MIT, and lives in Boston.

Thomas Gensemer

Managing Partner

Based in BSD's Washington, DC headquarters and in New York, Thomas provides day-to-day executive leadership, as well as executive sponsorship to several of the company's largest consulting engagements.  He joined BSD in 2005 with a background in venture capital, strategy consulting, product marketing and technology startup management.

Immediately prior to BSD, Thomas was the director of Internet strategy for America Coming Together (ACT), where he managed the organization's online fundraising, grassroots recruitment, and marketing. Prior to ACT, Thomas led online communications for General Wesley Clark's 2004 Presidential campaign, which built an unusually engaged supporter base that remained active after the race was over.

From 1999 to 2003, Thomas managed The Accelerator Group, an entrepreneurial venture capital fund with offices in New York, Los Angeles and London. The fund developed and funded a broad portfolio of early-stage technology and marketing businesses; its holdings included Pyra-Blogger (acquired by Google), Openwave (OPWV), 24/7 Media (TFSM), Meetup.com and a number of other concerns.  The community organizing, content development, and citizen engagement approaches that some of these companies pioneered continue to be relevant to the constituency development work our company does today.

Thomas is a graduate of New York University and lives in Washington, DC and New York.

Rich Mintz

Vice-President, Strategy

Rich provides executive sponsorship and senior program support to many of BSD’s most significant strategy engagements, and (along with Founding Partner Joe Rospars) he manages BSD’s client management and delivery staff. He leads many of BSD's large engagements in the academic, cultural, and healthcare markets, including institutional change management, annual fund, membership development, and stewardship programs.

Over his professional career in direct response fundraising and engagement programs, Rich has provided strategic direction and support to direct mail and Internet programs at a long list of nonprofit, political, and commercial organizations, including the DSCC and three Democratic Presidential campaigns; more than 50 nonprofits and issue advocacy organizations; and public companies including GE, Monsanto, and Schlumberger. He has particular experience helping mid-sized entrepreneurial programs grow quickly while maintaining their focus and operational strength.

Rich began his work in the field as a direct mail account executive at National Direct Marketing in Los Angeles almost 20 years ago. He was a co-founder of NetResponse, the Washington, DC-based Internet professional services firm that was acquired by iXL, Inc. in 1998; and of BusyTonight, a search engine technology company in New York. From 2001 to 2004, he owned and operated Peachtree Highway Books, a neighborhood bookstore with a national direct response program in Atlanta’s historic Candler Park neighborhood.

He holds an A.B. degree from Harvard College and lives in lower Manhattan, in a former commercial building two blocks from the World Trade Center site.

Joe Rospars

Founding Partner

A Blue State Digital founding partner, Joe served as the New Media Director for Barack Obama's presidential campaign, where he oversaw all online aspects of the unprecedented fundraising, communications and grassroots mobilization effort.

Joe led a wide-ranging program that integrated design and branding, web and video content, mass email, text messaging, and online advertising, organizing and fundraising.

Prior to the Obama campaign, Joe led BSD's work with Gov. Howard Dean at the Democratic National Committee; during Dean's campaign for party chairman; and at Democracy for America. Joe was a writer and strategist in New Media for Dean's 2004 Presidential campaign.

He holds a bachelor's degree in political science from the George Washington University.

Ben Self

Founding Partner

A founding partner of BSD, Ben Self brings a wealth of experience to many of our clients, based on his background in technology and experience in internet strategy.  Focusing on expanding and diversifying BSD domestically and internationally, Ben works with new clients to take BSD's strategic experience and apply it in new and different ways.

During the 2008 election cycle, Ben also served as the DNC Technology Director, where, as a key member of the DNC's senior staff, he supervised the technology projects of the national party - focusing specifically on the website, computer infrastructure, compliance software, and national voter file database.  In this role, Ben led projects that entirely revamped the technology of the DNC, including a complete replacement of the website and the Democratic Party's national voter file (VoteBuilder).

During his career, Ben has garnered extensive experience in new media technologies, statistical data analysis, data warehousing, database architecture and administration, system design, and system development. He helped build the FEC's system for gathering and reporting on campaign finance data, and architected the largest distributed Geographic Information Systems database ever deployed for the USDA. He has created data warehouses for a variety of industries, including health care, telecommunications, finance, and insurance. In these industries, he has worked at all levels of system development -- from designing and writing the software itself to managing large teams responsible for developing systems to be used by tens of thousands of users. In addition to this work, Ben has performed extensive research and written a thesis on object-oriented design.

Ben has both a bachelor's and a master's degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).