Friday, May 22, 2009

UT LeaderShape Grad Named 2009 Rising Star


Another LeaderShape grad is making a difference.

Piryx Inc. Founder, Tom Serres, now shares the title of Rising Star with past Rising Stars Karen Hughes and George Stephanopoulos.

Campaign & Elections’ Politics magazine announced on May 20, 2009, Tom Serres, Founder/CEO of Austin-based Piryx Inc, as one of the 2009 Rising Stars. One of the most prestigious honors in politics, the award goes to people 35 or under who have already made a significant mark in political consulting or advocacy. The magazine chose 10 Democrats, 10 Republicans and seven nonpartisan leaders this year out of a pool of several hundred nominees. The Rising Stars will be honored on June 12 in Washington D.C.

Past Rising Stars include Karen Hughes, George Stephanopoulos, David Axelrod, Paul Begala, Donna Brazile, James Carville, Rahm Emanuel, and Laura Ingraham.

“Capping off an historic election year, we received a record number of nominations for this year’s Rising Stars,” said James Klatell, managing editor of Politics. “With so many exceptional young people working in politics today, this was an exceedingly difficult process.”

Tom Serres, 27, is one of the seven nonpartisan leaders recognized this year. Serres is the entrepreneur behind Piryx, a social commerce platform aimed at empowering the little guys of the political world with online tools.

Piryx empowers users with technology to effectuate political and social change. Their web platform offers political aspirants the online tools needed for faster and easier compliance and fundraising, a social networking infrastructure with voters, and other political applications and resources needed for any campaign. Whether Barak Obama or Joe Blow, Piryx presents an affordable web platform to make a difference.

"Our mission is to ignite much needed involvement among the voter community, while allowing candidates at all levels to have the tools and information they need for an equal chance on Election Day," says Piryx CEO Tom Serres.

For a complete list of the 2009 Rising Stars, visit http://www.politicsmagazine.com/rising-stars-2009

The University of Texas-Austin has been a partner with LeaderShape since 1997 and will hold their 29th session of The LeaderShape Institute in May of this year.

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