REBECCA HARTSOUGH
Rebecca Hartsough serves as Senior Policy Advisor for Babbage Cofounder. Her interest in politics and government affairs began early and was further honed during her formative experience as Intern to First Lady Laura Bush. In 2018, Rebecca is delighted to return to the political arena working with Babbage Cofounder.
A native Kentuckian, Rebecca left the Commonwealth to pursue her undergraduate, Masters, and Ph.D. education at Emory University in Atlanta, GA. Between degrees, Rebecca worked as a Securities Litigation Analyst for Rogers & Hardin, a prestigious Atlanta boutique law firm. There, she worked directly with partners on churning and excessive trading cases, analyzing brokerage accounts and registered representatives’ trading behaviors. These forensic accounting efforts led to the recovery of $14MM in total restitution for aggrieved petitioners. Additionally, Rebecca investigated and compiled evidence of an Atlanta hedge fund manager’s Ponzi scheme resulting in a $5+MM judgment awarded to clients and the conviction and imprisonment of the fund manager.
Rebecca left the law firm to begin her doctoral studies in Political Science and Quantitative Methods at Emory. She trained rigorously in statistics and predictive analytics as well in substantive political coursework. While a graduate student, Rebecca lectured several undergraduate courses on American politics, constitutional law, and comparative politics. Over the course of six years, her students rated her courses and teaching at an average of 8.8 on a 9-point scale. Rebecca also developed written content for Constitutional Law for a Changing America, the number one selling undergraduate textbook on constitutional law. Her dissertation entitled, “Practical Politics: Explaining Delay in the Federal Judicial Appointment Process,” utilized statistical models and qualitative methods to identify previously unknown factors significant to slowing down and speeding up judicial nominations and confirmations.
Upon completing her doctorate, Rebecca was hired as the Data Science Liaison for Embold Health, a healthcare start-up focused on determining whether services and procedures provided to patients are medically necessary and cost effective. During her time at Embold, Rebecca coordinated with the company’s data partners across academic institutions, government agencies, and insurance companies to produce Embold’s initial set of proprietary healthcare measures and quantitative metrics. She also collected, analyzed, and prepared preliminary subspecialty data and written content for internal evaluations, external presentations, and clients’ future user experiences. Additionally, Rebecca utilized her teaching skills, serving as the company’s software and analytic platform instructor.
At Babbage Cofounder, Rebecca lobbies across a variety of industries including finance, healthcare, education, and manufacturing. She drives stakeholder engagement strategy through client updates, policy briefs, and data analysis. Rebecca specializes in translating complex issues and analytics into simple terms, building support for issues among policymakers and key leaders to communicate the ideal outcome, its value, and importance to Kentucky.