Champions of Change Blog

Always Wearing Green

Four-year letterman and stand-out fullback for the Fighting Irish football team, Chris Yura wore his Notre Dame Football uniform with great pride.  His “Papal Gold” helmet above the interlocking Madonna Blue “ND” monogram distinguished the team. 

Chris recognized the power of the Fighting Irish signature apparel by the excitement generated in the stands when they took the field. He also saw “The Shirt” bring people together far away from the college gridiron. Strangers in ND swag became instant comrades in the malls and on street corners around the world.

Chris Yura founded SustainU, an environmentally-friendly clothing line for colleges and universities, and has grown the company quickly in just a few years.

Making the Political Process More Open and Inclusive

Ed. Note: Champions of Change is a weekly initiative to highlight Americans who are making an impact in their communities and helping our country rise to meet the many challenges of the 21st century.

The Virginia General Assembly goes into session once each year, for 45–60 days. In a whirlwind of activity, the 140 legislators file thousands of bills, which wind their way towards becoming law in a process that can be confusing to legislators, and is downright baffling to citizens. The proceedings are covered by a dwindling press corps, the once-robust crowd of reporters having been reduced to just a few who reliably show up each day. The legislature has a website where the state’s eight million citizens can try to keep up with the goings-on, but the decade-old site often leaves people scratching their heads. Legislators’ voting records are nowhere to be found, no video of the proceedings is available, and the search engine works badly. It can be dispiriting for folks trying to find out what their legislators are doing.

As both a programmer and a follower of Virginia politics, I knew that there was a better way. I spent nights and weekends throughout the summer and fall of 2006 creating the sort of website that I wanted. The result, five years later, is Richmond Sunlight, a non-profit, non-partisan website that has changed how many people interact with and learn about their legislature.

Visitors are put at ease by a friendly, accessible color scheme and layout, by designer John Athayde. People can comment publicly on any bill, and robust discussions about the merits of legislation frequently follow, with legislators stopping by to answer questions or defend their proposals. Groups can create public portfolios of legislation that they’re following, with their own commentary and analysis about that legislation. Every legislator’s voting record is available to be browsed through, or downloaded as a spreadsheet for analysis. Video of the entire session is provided, indexed by bill and legislator, allowing anybody looking at a bill to instantly watch an automatically assembled highlight reel of every moment of floor discussion about it. A robust application programming interface (API) allows software and website developers to incorporate legislative data into their own applications. All of these features and more add up to a website that’s visited by over a hundred thousand Virginians each year.