Ed Forman
Ed Forman is a Harvard AB and Stanford GSB MBA whose career has been shaped by two enduring interests: political communication and technology strategy.
He began in politics, working as a junior aide to Michael Dukakis during his first term as Governor of Massachusetts. That early experience watching how campaigns and governments reach and persuade the public stayed with him through four decades of building and leading technology companies. His career has consistently tracked emerging technologies at an early stage — from data management platforms in the 1980s to mobile communications at RadioMail, to founding and leading Elemental Software, a web content authoring platform that was later acquired by Adobe. He also served as SVP Marketing at EnCommerce, a pioneer in ecommerce infrastructure, and as EVP Strategy and Corporate Development at ActiveVideo Networks. He is a long-standing member of the teaching team at Stanford GSB Executive Education.
Ed now focuses on a specific and consequential shift in how voters find information. When someone searches Google or asks a chatbot like ChatGPT about a candidate, an officeholder, or an advocacy organization, the response is shaped entirely by what those systems can find and synthesize. Most campaigns and organizations have weak AI presence — not because the information does not exist, but because it has not been structured in ways search engines and AI systems can use. Ed advises campaigns and organizations on how to diagnose and strengthen their AI presence.
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/edforman
Email: ed@swanberg.com