The Moment Is Now for HeadCount Executive Director Lucille Wenegieme
Back in September, HeadCount made a major announcement about its future. The non-partisan organization, which strives to facilitate voter registration and participation in democracy, revealed that founding Executive Director Andy Bernstein would be scaling back his role starting in 2024. The transition to new leadership began right away, as Executive Director Lucille Wenegieme came onboard and began working with Bernstein and HeadCount.
The 32-year-old Wenegieme, whose parents immigrated from Nigeria, has focused on voter advocacy for most of her career. She served as VP of Communications at the National Vote at Home Institute and then as the strategic advisor at the Office of the Clerk and Recorder in Denver. Wenegieme initially connected with HeadCount through its Save the Vote! campaign, while she was at the Institute and later became the first member of the HeadCount Advisory Board.
“Working directly with Lucille the last couple of months has been an absolute pleasure,” Bernstein says. “I love the fact that she is the same exact age I was when HeadCount started, so it feels like the perfect full-circle moment. But I’ve got to say, she is light-years more professional and ready to lead than I ever was. Every day working with Lucille, I feel that HeadCount’s future is only getting brighter.”
As for the organization’s ongoing mission to connect with young people, Wenegieme reflects, “I think a really big part of what HeadCount does is say, ‘You don’t have to wait until you feel like an adult to be part of this. This is your time; this is your moment.’”
Although you’ve been focused on civic issues for much of your career, you have a Master’s Degree in Medical Science. What led you to shift your path?
My parents are Nigerian and like a lot of immigrants, were really invested in making sure that whatever we did as kids was a foundation to a solid, stable life. So I was geared toward medicine as part of that. Throughout growing up and into college, the thought was that I was going to become a doctor because it seemed like a viable thing to do. I enjoyed science and math, so it made sense. Then after I went to a liberal arts college, I began to appreciate that there were all kinds of things that I could do for work that could make me relatively stable and happy.
That’s where the seed was started, but it took me a long time to really change the course of the wheel. I went to grad school and focused on using that as a launching pad to a medical career. But afterward, it became clear to me that I didn’t want to spend the next 10-20 years of my life doing that. It was interesting, but it wasn’t that interesting.
I built websites growing up and digital communication was always interesting to me. I started a fashion blog on my own after I came back from grad school. Through that, I started working [at Coach] and almost by virtue of being one of the younger people in the room, it was like, “OK, here’s digital.” A lot of what we were doing at the time was contacting influencers and getting them to do in-store activations so there was that online to offline pipeline.
So fashion was really my bridge into communications. Then a good friend of mine from college, who had already been working in political communications, said, “Hey, I do something similar to what you do, but I do it in the political space.” That seemed interesting to me. While I loved fashion, I still had that strong sense of service from thinking that I might be a doctor. So that really called to me. I started working at a small communications firm based out of Colorado where I got to try my hand at everything. My mother always says, “No knowledge is wasted.”
You moved on to the National Vote at Home Institute and then the Office of the Clerk and Recorder. How did those positions prepare you for your current one?
At the National Vote at Home Institute, primarily we were a policy organization. A lot of what we were doing was talking to election officials and to legislators who were asking, “How do we run elections during the pandemic, when we’re not sure how this disease is spread?” So voting by mail became a viable option in a lot of places where people weren’t considering it before. The organization had been around for many years, but this was when folks started to ask us, “How do we technically do this? How do we create the policy to be able to do this?”
Most election officials across the country don’t have a dedicated communication staff, so a lot of what I did was help them tell tens or hundreds of thousands of people about how they could vote and what their options were.
Then when I was at the Clerk’s office, we were administering elections, among other things. Denver is one of the largest counties in the country and one of the foremost election offices in terms of voter-centric policy. So when I was at the Vote at Home Institute, I was talking a lot to election officials and people in the election sphere about how we talk to voters, how we get them excited, how we get them engaged. Then I was at an election office talking to election officials and other folks about how to engage with voters.
The core philosophy that I’ve brought to HeadCount is that voting has to be a part of people’s lives for them to feel like they want to do it and to make them feel like they can do it. I’ve always loved that part of HeadCount’s philosophy is going to people at shows who have made music a really big part of their lives and letting them know that they can make civic engagement a part of their lives, too—that it can be fun and feel community-oriented rather than this sort of negative, polarizing “pick this person over this person” kind of narrative.
Given your areas of knowledge and expertise, what have you been thinking about as you contemplate the next steps for HeadCount?
If there’s anything that we’ve learned about young people, particularly during the pandemic, it is that they experience music in a lot of different ways. Yes, it’s going to shows and having that experience. Yes, it’s planning a festival trip and all the things that come with that. But it’s also the songs that are going viral on the social platforms and it’s the playlists that they’re using to really fuel the backdrop of their lives.
When I think about HeadCount—where we’ve been and where we’re going—it’s important that we not only continue to connect with young people and their experience with music in person, but also that we connect with them online because we know that that’s how young people are engaging with music. For instance, a lot of folks are finding new artists through things that are tagged in TikTok videos.
So what does it look like to continue to show up and give folks that in-person experience while also knowing that people are experiencing music in a lot of different ways?
I think part of what I’m bringing here is that additional layer of “How do we make this feel as pervasive as music feels for young people?”
My younger brother is in the core demographic for us. He’s 28 and he’s hugely into music. He has multiple record players and he’s always finding the newest artist, the newest mashup. He’s making music himself. He plays multiple instruments, but he rarely goes to shows. He goes to the top artists when he feels like he’s not going to be able to have that experience anywhere else, but he’s interacting with so many different musicians at different points in their careers— emerging artists, legacy artists, all of that. I don’t think that’s an uncommon experience for a lot of young people.
Obviously, we still want people to come out to shows. There’s a magic thing that happens when you’re seeing someone you love and whose music you’ve engaged with for a long time, but we’ve got to meet people where they are. For some people that’s at a show; for other people that’s in their Spotify playlist.
Can you talk about your engagement with music over the years?
A lot of my first music experiences were through my family. My parents were listening to Anita Baker and Sade and the sort of music that was in vogue when they first came to the States, so that’s a lot of what I grew up with.
Then once I started having the money to go into Target and buy the CDs that I wanted, I was getting a lot of the pop[1]punk stuff. This will probably put me in a certain age range, but Linkin Park was the first album that I bought with my own money. I’m pretty sure it was Hybrid Theory. I was also listening to a lot of Panic at the Disco and Fall Out Boy.
For me, when I think of how I formed my first relationships with music and the artists that I really love, it was a way to almost assimilate into a culture and feel connected with my friends and have an experience outside of my home that felt different. My parents were listening to a very specific thing and we were going to a lot of Nigerian parties and listening to a lot of Nigerian music at home.
The first time I put my energy toward going to a show, it was the Warped Tour. So that was my entree. Of course, since then, I’ve been able to explore across genres.
I’ve seen Florence and the Machine a few times. I live in Denver now—although I’m moving to New York at the end of the year—and I had one of those really special experiences seeing Florence and the Machine at Red Rocks. It was a blood-orange moon, the moon was right above the stage and she was running around barefoot in this flowing dress. It was one of those shows where anybody who was there was like, “We are going to continue to talk about this for a while.” There is that feeling of connecting music to life, to the moment and to community, which is a huge piece of HeadCount. We’re introducing and often facilitating civic engagement in that community. It’s really at the core of what we do.
Now that you’ve been in your new role for a little while, is there some aspect that’s surprised you?
One thing that strikes me is the size of HeadCount. If you were to count how many people have been HeadCount volunteers over the course of time, it’s more than 60,000. I would love for us to be able to do a full roll call at some point to figure out what that big number is. There have been so many people who have been optimistic about being part of the music community and who believe that the music community can show up and do good.
However, when we’re looking at the core group of folks who are working day in, day out for HeadCount, it’s a lot smaller than people would think. This team has made history in so many ways. With our collaboration with Harry Styles—registering hundreds of thousands of voters—the impact is huge. But I think people would imagine that HeadCount is way bigger on the inside than it actually is. That continues to be a testament to what any group of people in a community can do and the impact that they can have.
What have you taken away from your time working with Andy?
It’s been a real joy working with him. I officially started in September, and we’re both on full-time together through the end of the year. Then he’ll essentially be moving to part-time so he can continue to do some other projects while still being in the HeadCount world. Andy’s obviously dedicated—you don’t do a thing for 20 years unless you’re dedicated—but he’s also an engine. He is moving all the time, and he has this indomitable energy that’s really inspiring. I’m excited to take up the mantle of that a bit more. He’s also not scared to do the work. I think there are a lot of folks in Andy’s position who have built something for this long— something that feels like such an institution—who might shun a little bit of the day-to-day stuff.
But he’s still so in it and that’s inspiring and reflects a level of care. Andy not only loves this organization, but he also loves meeting people at shows and he loves the music community. This is really a work of love for him. I don’t know if he’d use those words, but that’s what I would call it. He’s in it every day, and he and I are emailing late at night.
So I’m excited to still have him around and in the orbit going into 2024. It’s such a big year. It’ll be HeadCount’s 20th anniversary in February and he’ll still be in the mix. There isn’t really a HeadCount without Andy at this point. He’s a really lovely person to work with.
Looking ahead, what do you anticipate is the biggest challenge you’ll be tackling?
When I think of the biggest challenge, it’s definitely outside of the house, as it were. The folks who work at HeadCount are thoughtful and dedicated, and many of them have been at HeadCount for so long that I get to continue to support them and facilitate their greatness in a lot of ways.
Who knows what the next headline is going to be? Or what might happen with the candidates or apathy—all of these things are sort of outside the house in that way.
There’s a potential that 2024 feels difficult and dark in terms of the media landscape. So when I think of the biggest challenge, it’s making sure that we can continue to bring the level of joy that is required to show up and do the thing in the midst of all of that. I also worry about young people.
I worry that when you haven’t had as many arcs of history to live through, you might not believe there is a way through. It can be really daunting. It is an unprecedented time in a lot of ways for young people. So I worry that we might lose them to disillusionment before we get to them. All we can do is show up every day, be really thoughtful, bring joy and give them what they need to have their voices heard in the midst of everything. That’s why we’re here.
