Our guiding principle when introducing complicated policy matters for clients is to assume your first shot is the most important shot. To succeed, you need to define your objectives early with simplicity, values, and power.
Nathan Barankin is one of California’s most experienced political, policy, and legal strategists. During his more than two decades in public service, Nathan has played a leadership role in shaping the outcome of many of the most significant public policy issues confronting California and the nation.
People are busy, and media noise is ephemeral by storyline but chaotic by volume. We develop successful strategies that penetrate the clutter and provide clarity of purpose.
Karen Skelton is the Founder and President of Skelton Strategies, a boutique political and strategic consulting firm in California. She is a nationally recognized political and policy strategist with deep experience in energy, media technology, complex litigation teams, economic justice, innovation, and women’s health.
For more than 30 years, Karen has worked within the private and public sectors to design policy campaigns at the intersection of politics, law, and communications. She knows how to get things done.
As a strategist, Skelton has successfully managed some of the most complex and entrepreneurial projects in the nation for presidents, vice presidents, governors, CEOs, and foundations. She spent a decade in Washington DC, working in the Clinton/Gore White House as Deputy Political Director to the President, and in the US Departments of Justice and Transportation. Skelton spent another decade building and advancing to sale a multi-million-dollar national public affairs practice for the Dewey Square Group in her home state of California.
Previously, Karen served as CEO of The Shriver Reports, a nonprofit media initiative which examined seismic societal shifts affecting American women and families. Skelton’s work, led by journalist and former first Lady Maria Shriver, has reported on women and work, Alzheimer’s, poverty, and most recently aging. She was also the coordinating producer of the Emmy-nominated and Television Academy–honored HBO documentary Paycheck to Paycheck: The Life and Times of Katrina Gilbert. The Shriver Report was part of the team winning a 2015 Emmy for All In with Chris Hayes for news discussion and analysis.
Currently, Skelton serves on the boards of the Public Policy Institute of California, National Parks Foundation Council, the Institute for Democracy and Justice, the Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement, Capitol Weekly’s Open California, and She Shares, which she co-founded in 2012.
Skelton has a BA with Honors from UCLA, a master’s degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and a JD from the UC Berkeley Law School.
When Skelton isn’t navigating her way through complex policy issues, you can find her hiking her way through the Sierras, biking, visiting her college-aged daughters in DC, or playing at home with her husband and two dogs Seamus and Shamrock.
Nathan Barankin is one of California’s most experienced political, policy, and legal strategists. During his more than two decades in public service, Nathan has played a leadership role in shaping the outcome of many of the most significant public policy issues confronting California and the nation. In 2020, Nathan brought that experience to his own government and public affairs firm – Oak Tree Strategies – and formed a strategic partnership with Karen Skelton.
Nathan has worked at the highest levels of state and national government – serving in senior leadership positions for three California attorneys general, two California State Senate presidents pro tem, and a U.S. Senator in Washington, D.C. Nathan also has managed or served as a senior advisor on numerous successful statewide and legislative district electoral campaigns.
Prior to forming Oak Tree Strategies, Nathan was a Senior Advisor to Kamala Harris in her presidential campaign. He previously led Senator Harris's transition to the United States Senate, and served for two years as her first Chief of Staff in Washington, D.C. where he managed all aspects of Senator Harris’s federal and state operations.
Prior to his service in the U.S. Senate, Nathan was Chief Deputy Attorney General for Kamala Harris from 2013-2016, and was her Chief of Staff from 2011-2012. As Chief Deputy, Nathan managed a department of nearly 5,000 employees - including 1,100 attorneys - and directed the activity of all aspects of the Attorney General's office. Among other accomplishments, Nathan helped secure one of the nation’s most expansive foreclosure reform statutes, developed successful legal and policy strategies for protecting students of private for-profit colleges, and helped craft the legal strategy resulting in national legalization of same-sex marriage.
Nathan's prior experience includes service as a Deputy Attorney General in the Government Law Section, where he handled litigation matters on behalf of nearly all of the state's constitutional officers, as well as drafting of ballot measure titles and summaries. As a Deputy Attorney General, Nathan litigated numerous successful bench trials in state superior, appellate and federal district courts.
Nathan previously worked in senior policy and political positions for two presidents pro tem of the California State Senate - Bill Lockyer and Darrell Steinberg. For Senator Lockyer, Nathan served as his Legislative Director and also helped manage a variety of State Senate campaigns, as well as Senator Lockyer's two successful campaigns for Attorney General. For Senator Steinberg, Nathan served as a Senior Legal Advisor and Communications Director, where he helped navigate the state’s response to the Great Recession and lay the groundwork for the state’s economic recovery.
Prior to joining Senator Steinberg's staff, Nathan was Communications Director for then-Attorney General Bill Lockyer. During Lockyer's second term, Nathan attended McGeorge School of Law, graduating in 2006 as Order of the Coif.
We care about you and your privacy so we have designed this privacy policy in order to inform our users the way we collect any kind of information from them and how we use that information. By using www.skeltonbarankin.com (the “website”), you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy.
We may collect information such as your name, email address, and telephone number when contacting us regarding your initial queries. We advise you to please carefully go through the document in order to understand our privacy policy. Moreover, we may change this document or make some adjustments from time to time, please make sure to visit this page regularly to stay up to date.
Your personal details will never be shared to the third party advertisers.
Information and its use:
When contacting us are required to enter personal details which may include:
We collect the information from you in order to:
You can visit our website, read materials, and browse the website’s contents without giving us any personally identifiable information. In order to provide you with the most efficient and enhanced personalized service and attention, we collect certain information automatically.
How We Collect and Use Information
Log Files. When you visit our website, the information from your visit is automatically gathered by our servers from your browser. This information includes your IP address, browser specifications, Internet service provider you use, pages you visit, type of platform and number of clicks. By doing this we analyze trends and brands, prevent fraud, gather demographic info and many more. We do not share the log files and they are securely kept.
Cookies. When you are visiting our site or using our Services we use “cookies” to track some information. Cookies are extremely small files that are places on your computer. They allow us to keep track of the number of visitors and to recognize the repeat visitors from the new ones. Furthermore, cookies allow us to save user preferences and in the same time to keep the track of the current user trends. Cookies are important to your user experience and if your browser rejects all cookies you will not have a proper use of the website. Any User that rejects the use of cookies assumes all the responsibilities for any possible data loss. The cookies are not linked to any Personally Identifiable Information (“PII”).
What types of cookies do we use? We use first person, second person, session, flash and persistent cookies. When delivering special content such as video clips or animation, we may use Adobe Flash Player. These cookies, also known as local shared objects, are used to improve your browsing experience by remembering your preferences and settings. These cookies are managed by an interface different from your web browser and are stored on your device. Flash cookies, however, are not managed through your web browser the same way as other cookies. The time a cookie stays on your browsing device depends on whether it is a “session” or “persistent” cookie. Persistent cookies are stored until they are deleted or expire, while session cookies are stored until you stop browsing.
Web Beacons. “Web beacons” are often used together with cookies to personalize the website for our users. Web beacons, that are also called “clear gifs” or “tacking pixels” are actually small graphic images that are transparent that are used to collect a small amount of information about our visitors. Web beacons may be used sometimes through e-mail in order to aid in the understanding user behavior. Web beacons are not linked to any PII.
Mobile Analytics. For better understanding of the functions of our mobile software we use mobile analytics. Mobile Analytics are used to keep track of certain information including how often you use the application, all the events that happen within the use of the application, the amount of usage, performance of the application, and where it was downloaded from. We do not link any information that we store through mobile analytics software to any PII.
Method of Contact
Telephone: We may contact you personally via the telephone number given in the contact form.
E-mail: We reserve the right to send e-mails to those who have signed up on our website or posted any query. We will never spam you. If you are interested in not receiving any e-mail from us, please respond to our email and let us know. All e-mails are sent by our company and we do not share your personal details with third-party sites. We will take commercially reasonable steps to implement your opt-out requests promptly; we do NOT utilize commercial marketing email newsletter systems.
Changes to Our Privacy policy
We reserve the right to modify or make adjustments in this privacy policy without prior notice. Should any of these changes generate an error or discrepancy, you, as the user, agree that the website and its company shall not be held liable for any damages caused by said issue. If we make material changes to this policy, or in how we use or collect your personally identifiable information, we will prominently post such changes prior to implementing the change. We will not make any retroactive material changes in how we handle previously collected personal information unless you allow us to do so, or unless we are legally required to do so, and in such a case we will e-mail registered website visitors information on material changes to this Privacy Policy.
Conditions of Use, Notices, and Revisions
If you choose to visit our Website, your visit and any dispute over privacy is subject to this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use, including limitations on damages, resolution of disputes, and application of the law of the State of California. If you have any concern about privacy at our Website, please contact us with a thorough description of that concern, and we will address it to the best of our ability. As our business changes, our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use may change also. We may e-mail periodic reminders of our notices and conditions, unless you have instructed us not to, but you should check our website frequently to see recent changes. Unless stated otherwise, our current Privacy Policy applies to all information that we have about you and your account.
Your California Privacy Rights
California Civil Code Section § 1798.83 permits users of our Website that are California residents to request certain information regarding our disclosure of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, please send an email to admin@skeltonbarankin.com
Visitors from Outside of the United States
Our website and the servers that make this website available worldwide are located in the United States. The Internet laws in the United States govern all matters relating to this website. Any information you provide in subscribing to our website or registering or ordering at our website will be transferred to the United States. By visiting our website and submitting information, you authorize this transfer, processing and use.
General Data Protection Regulation
If you are in the European Union (EU), you have specific rights under the General Data Protection Regulation.
If you choose to provide us with information, you may ask us at any time to delete the information, with which we will comply in a reasonably timely manner if we have not independently chosen to delete the same information prior to your request. In either case, you will be advised accordingly.
You may request a copy of any computer file compiling your information, to the extent we have collected it, and such file will be provided to you in a commercially reasonable period, if it has not been previously deleted, as noted above.
You may ask us not to process your data, or to share it with any entities that would do so. Please note, however, that there is no known sharing of any data by our company with third parties, and outside of the unlikely possibility of subpoena, other court order, or legally-compliant government investigation, no desire to do so.
If you have consented to the processing of your personal data, you may withdraw that consent at any time – though please note that processing that had occurred prior to such withdrawal would remain legal in retrospect.
The information that is asked from you is intended only to fulfill the requirements to form a contract, and no additional information gathering or processing will be required than must be for that purpose.
If you are in the European Union (EU), you have specific rights under the General Data Protection Regulation.
If you choose to provide us with information, you may ask us at any time to delete the information, with which we will comply in a reasonably timely manner if we have not independently chosen to delete the same information prior to your request. In either case, you will be advised accordingly.
You may request a copy of any computer file compiling your information, to the extent we have collected it, and such file will be provided to you in a commercially reasonable period, if it has not been previously deleted, as noted above.
You may ask us not to process your data, or to share it with any entities that would do so. Please note, however, that there is no known sharing of any data by our company with third parties, and outside of the unlikely possibility of subpoena, other court order, or legally-compliant government investigation, no desire to do so.
If you have consented to the processing of your personal data, you may withdraw that consent at any time – though please note that processing that had occurred prior to such withdrawal would remain legal in retrospect.
The information that is asked from you is intended only to fulfill the requirements to form a contract, and no additional information gathering or processing will be required than must be for that purpose.
Security
We incorporate standard industry practices internally and with our service providers, which we believe suits the degree of sensitivity of the information involved to maintain the security of your personal information and to avoid its disclosure except as described in this Privacy Policy.
Although we have implemented systems and procedures to secure the data maintained by us, security during Internet transmissions can never be assured. Our policy is to limit access to personal data to those employees or agents with a specific need to access or retrieve this information. We store data on multiple service systems, in controlled environments. To maintain security, we conduct internal reviews of our security measures on a regular basis.
Any questions about these terms may be directed through e-mail to admin@skeltonbarankin.com