The System Failed His Family Too
Tim's brother was born with a serious heart condition.
The insurance company called it a pre-existing condition and refused to cover the care. His mother — a teacher now but a lawyer then — fought back and forced them to pay. But even with coverage, the bills came anyway. And at some point the choice became brutally simple: pay the medical expenses, or keep the house.
His family bounced back. A lot of families don't.
So when Tim talks about how healthcare fails families, he's knows what’s at stake. A lot of politicians don’t.
From Believer to Organizer
Tim was captivated by politics as a high school senior, interning on Obama for America in Fauquier County in 2008. He believed elections could change things. Then he spent years watching the gap between what politics promises and what it delivers. He took the long way through it. Two jobs to pay for community college, then two more to finish his degree, sixty-hour weeks with managers shaving his hours on paper so they wouldn't owe him overtime. He knows what it means to work that hard and still fall behind, because he lived it, and because a single mother from Honduras he worked alongside once gave him $120 she couldn't spare to help cover his tuition. He never forgot what that kind of generosity looked like.
He interned for Senator Tim Kaine and saw government from the inside. Then he left it, because he decided the real work happened in communities, not committee rooms. Since 2019, he has served as Communications Director for the Sierra Club Virginia Chapter.
Tim Fights With Communities That Aren't Supposed To Win
The fights Tim joined weren't supposed to be winnable. The other side always had the money, the connections, and the people in the right rooms. What they never counted on was a community willing to push back, and an organizer who refused to let them be ignored. In Russell County, a developer tried to build the largest private landfill in Virginia, with the former head of the state's environmental agency as their consultant. The community called Tim. They fought back together. They won. That wasn't the only time. Tim helped communities stop reckless data center developments in Chesapeake, Charles City County, and Hanover. He helped secure tens of millions in new financial aid for Virginia students and passed protections against predatory student loan servicers, while still paying off his own. He trained frontline leaders to win Medicaid expansion, because healthcare access is the difference between getting care and going without. Every time, someone with more power was on the other side. Every time, the community won anyway.
Why Dignity. Why Now.
Tim is running because the rules of our politics were written to protect the powerful, and until we change them, the best ideas in the world won't be enough. That's what the Fair Shot Agenda is about. Better rules, not just better promises. But underneath every fight he's ever joined is one idea. The family choosing between a mortgage and a medicine. The worker cheated out of overtime. The immigrant who gave what little she had. They were all told, in one way or another, that they didn't count. Tim believes they do. All of them. That's what dignity means, and it's why he won't stop fighting for it. Dignity for All. No Exceptions.