Shaunna Thomas

Early in her career, Thomas was chief operating officer of the Progressive Caucus Policy Center, a nonprofit supporting the policy and organizing work of the Congressional Progressive Caucus; she later co-founded and served as director of the P Street Project, a nonprofit dedicated to organizing progressive members of Congress.⁠[1][1]

UltraViolet’s first campaign targeted Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer prevention services: more than 37,000 members demanded that Komen have Karen Handel, its vice president of public policy, step down. After Handel resigned on February 7, 2012, Thomas said Handel had put an extremist political agenda ahead of women’s lives, and that her resignation was a positive sign for the organization.⁠[2][3][2][2][2][2]

On February 5, 2026, UltraViolet Action announced that Arisha Hatch, who had been serving as interim executive director, would become executive director. Speaking as co-founder, Thomas said that passing the torch to Hatch was one of the greatest honors of her time at UltraViolet Action, and that she would continue to support the organization.⁠[4][4][4][4][4]

On June 18, 2026, Thomas and Leah Hunt-Hendrix publicly launched Guardrails Alliance, with backing from tech company employees and labor unions. Thomas said people still have the power to stop the “autocratic takeover” of the Trump administration and the tech sector; she said the organization does not intend to match Leading the Future dollar for dollar, but to be a “political home” for people concerned about the anti-regulation AI tech sector manipulating elections.⁠[5][6][5][5][5]

The committee’s first ad buy supported Alex BoresAlex BoresAlex Bores is an American Democratic politician, a member of the New York State Assembly, and a former software engineer. He sponsored New York’s frontier AI safety law, the RAISE Act, in the state Assembly; while running in 2026 for the House seat in New York’s 12th congressional district, he became the first target of Leading the Future, an AI industry super PAC, and lost the Democratic primary that June.Open the full entry, a candidate in New York’s 12th congressional district.⁠[6][5][6]

Thomas has worked in progressive organizing for about twenty years, in areas including culture-change strategies, building progressive infrastructure, and national policy advocacy. UltraViolet is a feminist activist organization with about 1.2 million members, known for campaigns on accountability for gender-based violence and for holding corporations and media platforms accountable for gendered disinformation and sexist AI. She has appeared numerous times as a political commentator on networks including NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and CNBC.⁠[1][1][1][1]