Conversations with Lindsay DeFranco

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lindsay DeFranco.

Hi Lindsay, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’m a Georgia Peach, born and raised in Alpharetta. North Fulton is the place that shaped how I think about community, so after spending years in California building my career, coming home felt a little like fate.

My career in independent media started in 2006, back when “independent media” mostly meant a camera, an internet connection, and a very high tolerance for embarrassment. I was one of the earliest people posting on YouTube, and my first videos were me talking about Braves games.

Years later, my husband and I built an independent news company from the ground up. We deliberately bypassed traditional gatekeepers and corporate investors because independence mattered to us. We didn’t want anyone else having a say in what we could or could not cover.

From there, I co-founded a nonprofit focused on media literacy because I kept running into the same problem: people aren’t short on information. They’re short on context, and most people don’t have hours every day to sort through everything they’re being told and determine what they can trust.

I’ve spent essentially my entire adult life in the public eye as a content creator, entrepreneur, and advocate, and I’ve earned the trust of hundreds of thousands of people in the process. It turns out that spending twenty years learning how to make complicated information understandable, accessible, and even entertaining is a strange but incredibly useful starting point for public service.

During COVID, I went back to college to finish my degree with plans to attend law school. I wanted to become a civil rights attorney and help in the fight against injustice and abuses of power.

I took the LSAT, and somewhere along the way I realized law school wasn’t actually the path for me. I’m a lifelong learner, but I also realized I didn’t need another degree or a particular title to start making a difference.
So I put that energy into civic work instead.

For the past two years, I’ve been showing up at the Georgia Capitol during legislative sessions to learn how the process actually works, track legislation, sit through committee hearings, and testify when I believe my voice can make a difference. I regularly attend State Election Board meetings, and I’ve worked at polling locations as an ACLU legal observer.

Eventually, I realized I didn’t just want to understand how these systems worked or advocate from the outside. I wanted to take responsibility for helping make them work better.

So now I’m the Democratic nominee for Georgia State House District 47, running to represent the community that raised me.

I’ve spent the last two years immersing myself in civic life in Georgia and learning government the same way I’ve learned almost everything else in my life: by showing up, asking questions, getting in the room, and doing the work.

It may not be the traditional path to the State House, but then again, I’ve never really taken the traditional path anywhere.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Definitely not.

I’ve always been someone who wanted to do things my own way, and early on, that meant working pretty hard to convince my parents, and sometimes myself, that I could build a successful life without following the traditional high school → college → job path.

I struggled with ADHD in high school, and at the time I didn’t really understand why the path that seemed to work for everyone else felt so difficult for me. Eventually, I learned to find different ways to work, learn, and succeed.

In a strange way, that became one of the most valuable lessons of my life: there isn’t one correct path, and struggling in one environment doesn’t determine what you’re capable of.

I’m not going to pretend the road from there to here was easy. I’ve taken risks, changed directions, failed at things, started over, and had plenty of moments when other people had very strong opinions about what I should or shouldn’t be doing.

But looking back, I can see a through line. I’ve spent much of my career trying to give people a clearer view of how power actually operates and helping them understand systems that can otherwise feel inaccessible. Running for office is just the version of that where you have to put your own name on it.

All of those experiences have given me a lot more empathy, but they’ve also taught me not to let other people define who I am or what I’m capable of.

I think that’s a big part of why listening matters so much to me now. You rarely know the full story of what someone else is carrying or what brought them to where they are. Taking the time to understand what’s underneath the surface, and approaching people with a little more curiosity and kindness, can go a lot further than we realize.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
My career has never fit neatly into one box. Over nearly two decades online, I’ve worked in sports broadcasting, travel and lifestyle content, media literacy, advocacy, entrepreneurship, and independent news, all while helping my husband build and run our news company, Rogue Rocket, home to The Philip DeFranco Show, one of the longest-running independent news shows on YouTube.

The common thread through all of it is communication.

I’ve spent years thinking about how information reaches people, how we decide what we can trust, and how to make complicated subjects understandable without talking down to people. I think one of the things I’m best at is taking something that feels overwhelming or inaccessible and saying, “Okay, here’s what’s actually happening, here’s why it matters, and here’s what you can do about it.”

But I’m also someone who needs to understand things for myself.

I believe one of the best ways to learn is to fully immerse yourself in the environment you want to understand. I thrive when I can be in the room where debates happen and decisions are made.

That’s why I regularly attend Georgia State Election Board meetings instead of only reading about what happened afterward. It’s why I’ve spent countless hours at the Capitol sitting in the gallery listening to debates, tracking votes, and, most importantly, sitting through committee hearings where so much of the real work of legislating happens.

Most recently, I testified against legislation that would have exposed librarians to criminal penalties over allegedly “objectionable” material. I wasn’t there because someone hired me to be there. I was there because I had read the legislation, understood what I believed its consequences could be, and knew I had the ability to speak up.
That probably gets closest to what I’m most proud of.

I’ve been fortunate enough to build a successful career without fitting myself into one box, but success has also given me the freedom to show up when I think showing up matters.

Whether I’m working in media, volunteering in my community, talking to someone at their front door, or sitting through hours of testimony at the Capitol, I try to lead with curiosity. I’m willing to listen, ask questions, admit when I don’t know something, and then do the work to understand it.

I don’t think you have to know everything to be a good leader. I think you have to care enough to keep learning, listen to the people who know more than you do, and be willing to change your mind when the facts call for it.

How do you think about luck?
I used to be comfortable attributing my success to luck, but I like to take ownership of it now.

This all started because I decided to graduate high school a year early, was brave enough to start posting content online when it wasn’t cool, and stuck with it despite losing all of my friends and the respect of some of the people closest to me. Even way back in 2006, I believed social media was going to change the world.

Getting in on the ground floor wasn’t so much luck as it was audacity. The audacity to see an opportunity before it was obvious, to take myself seriously before other people did, and to keep going when almost everyone around me thought I was wasting my time.

From there, luck certainly played a role. I’ve been incredibly fortunate. But turning that initial opportunity into a career and a business required an enormous amount of intention.

There were opportunities, relationships, and chance moments I never could have planned for that completely changed the course of my life. At the same time, some of the things that felt like terrible luck while I was living through them ended up redirecting me toward something better or teaching me something I wouldn’t realize I needed until years later.

I think luck opens doors sometimes. But you still have to recognize the door, decide to walk through it, and do something with what’s on the other side.

So I believe in luck. I just don’t give it all the credit anymore.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lindsayforga.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lindsayforga
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LindsayForGA
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsaydefranco/
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@lindsayforga?si=lENh8X2tM0ezVxnT
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@linzdefranco