Wally Nowinski

Wally Nowinski is a new father, homeowner, Democratic activist, and business leader who has built his career asking tough questions and getting results.

Wally and his wife Anne bought their first home in El Cerrito in 2023, where they're now raising their three-month-old daughter, Margot.

He grew up in Metro Detroit and graduated from the University of Michigan. As a student, he led a successful effort to break up predatory textbook monopolies, forcing professors to release their book lists earlier so students could shop online and save money.

After college, he helped restructure county government in Macomb County, Michigan, the pivotal swing county famous as the home of the "Reagan Democrats." Facing an establishment resistant to reform, Wally took a series of measures straight to the voters and won.

He went on to work on congressional campaigns for Rep. Niki Tsongas of Massachusetts and Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan. On both, he set aside the standard consultant playbook, bringing digital advertising and fundraising in-house and delivering stronger results at a fraction of the cost.

Wally then joined the photo-gift startup Collage.com as an early employee. Leading marketing, he helped bootstrap the all-remote company from nothing to more than $140 million in annual revenue and over 100 employees, with no debt and no outside investment. Competing against giants like Walmart and Shutterfly meant measuring every dollar and building expertise in-house rather than handing it to agencies. He left in 2021 after the company was sold.

During the 2024 election, Wally returned to politics and founded an anti-Trump super PAC that found low-cost, overlooked corners of the ad market to stretch every dollar. The effort drew national attention and praise for its creative approach.

More recently, Wally helped lead the effort against Measure C, El Cerrito's library parcel tax. Despite endorsements from nearly the entire local establishment, voters rejected it by a margin of roughly 70 to 30.

Today, Wally leads the consumer sales division of Impulse Labs, maker of the most powerful and precise stove ever built, where he's again focused on letting a genuinely better product speak for itself rather than leaning on celebrity endorsements.

The thread running through all of it is simple: Wally does the homework, asks the hard questions, and isn't afraid to push back against the establishment. That's the approach he'll bring to El Cerrito City Council.