Kelly Dietrich

7 min

Kelly Dietrich

About Kelly

Originally from Missouri, Kelly got his first job at 14, bagging groceries and punching a union card. When his store employees went on strike, he watched negotiations play out up close and got an early education in the gap between the people with power and the people without it. It stuck with him.

He eventually found his way into politics because he knew government would be the fastest way to move the needle for the most people at once. He'll be the first to tell you the world will never be perfectly fair. But he feels a duty to keep raising the bar.

After years of working on campaigns as a strategist and fundraiser, Kelly realized it was no one's job to help every Democrat on every ballot win. He was winning races in Kansas and Missouri — places where there wasn’t enough party infrastructure to help the many talented down-ballot candidates who are often the better representative for their communities. 

That's what drove him to launch NDTC. It was, and is still, the only organization whose mission is to eliminate barriers and democratize the process for any Democrat who wants to run for office. Kelly focused on making high-quality tools and training available to any Democrat who steps up to run for office, work on a campaign, or make their community better. In 10 years, he's trained more than 128,000 Democrats to build people power that outlasts one election cycle.

Today, he lives in Chicago with his wife, his daughter, and their dogs. When he's not building NDTC, he’s an obnoxiously proud girl dad who’s on the basketball court or in the gym, trying to stay grounded in what actually matters. He’s in this work for his daughter — as far as he’s concerned it’s her world and he’s lucky to live in it — and he wants her and the future of all of our kids to be your reason for getting in it, too. 

Background & Experience

Kelly’s start in politics came out of a rejection of the alternative. After college, he took a job at a mutual fund company and hated it. Not just the work, but what it represented: a world where access to opportunity and support depended on what you could afford. He walked away and didn't look back.

Instead, he joined his first campaign in Kansas in 1997, working on a Congressional race in a state with almost no Democratic infrastructure to speak of. That’s when he saw talented, motivated candidates with not enough people in their corner and no system to plug into. He saw the same pattern repeat itself when he returned to Missouri for a U.S. Senate race that was slipping redder by the cycle. They lost by a point or two. He knew it had to change. 

So after more than 20 years of working on dozens of Democratic campaigns across the country, Kelly launched NDTC in 2016 with a straightforward premise: high-quality campaign training shouldn't live behind a paywall, and it shouldn't only flow to candidates at the top of the ticket. He started with a collection of free videos covering the basics of running a campaign. A few years later, that library had grown into a fully fledged training program with hundreds of courses, videos, and articles spanning fundraising, voter contact, staff management, and more.

Today, NDTC is an industry leader in Democratic politics and technology — and the only organization that exists to help every Democrat, everywhere, regardless of district, budget, or name recognition, all for free.

Kelly's Vision for Democrats

Kelly is direct about what he thinks the Democratic Party must get right: Democrats must improve long-term infrastructure and invest in the long game. It’s time to focus on building for future cycles that will pay off in two, four, and ten years down the line instead of continuing to reward short-term wins. We need a home base. A consistent, aggressive brand. To define ourselves before Republicans do.

One of his biggest challenges in today's political landscape is that we run campaigns in an attention economy. When Democrats don't show up, real people suffer. Donations don't come through for organizations like NDTC, filling the long-term building gap. The work of scaling and sustaining infrastructure stalls because that infrastructure was never a shared foundation of the party to begin with. NDTC is helping change that outdated perception through partnerships, helping the party create a shared identity that prioritizes and champions growth and long-term investment. Kelly has seen firsthand how this unlocks much-needed Democratic talent and spurs progress downballot, where everyday people see politics in motion. 

His ask is straightforward: stop measuring success by what happens next November. Start thinking five, ten, twenty years down the line. Invest in candidates early. Build the bench. Show up in every district, every cycle, whether it's “winnable” on paper or not. That's what NDTC is here for, and that's what Kelly has spent his career building toward.

"I started NDTC because I believe that Democrats need to build long-term power from the ground up, not just from the top down. We need to kick down the barriers to political participation — especially in those suburban and rural areas that Republicans falsely claim as their exclusive territory. That's what NDTC does. For free." – Kelly Dietrich

As Featured In

Connect with Kelly

Train with NDTC