Sara Fagen

Sara Fagen is a serial entrepreneur, technology executive, and four-time founder whose career has been defined by building category-defining companies that help organizations better understand, predict, and influence the audiences that matter most. For more than two decades, she has built companies at the intersection of artificial intelligence, data, audience intelligence, public affairs, and communications.

Sara is the co-founder and CEO of Tunnl, an AI-powered operating system for audience intelligence and decision making, which she launched in 2021. Under her leadership, Tunnl is building a proprietary intelligence platform that connects research, predictive modeling, audience intelligence, activation, and measurement into a single closed-loop system. By combining continuously refreshed human intelligence with artificial intelligence, Tunnl enables brands, agencies, media companies, and public affairs organizations to turn research into measurable action across digital, streaming, television, and emerging media.

Prior to Tunnl, Sara co-founded Resonate, one of the first companies to combine large-scale survey research with behavioral data to better understand consumer attitudes, motivations, and future behavior. Around the same time, she founded BlueFront Strategies, an issue advocacy consultancy that was acquired by DDC Public Affairs, where she became a partner and helped lead the firm’s successful sale to Omnicom Group (NYSE: OMC) in 2014.

In 2013, Sara co-founded Deep Root Analytics, a pioneering audience intelligence and media technology company that helped redefine television targeting by integrating predictive modeling, audience intelligence, media planning, activation, and measurement. Many of the techniques developed there have since become standard practice across political, advocacy, and commercial advertising.

Across each of these ventures, Sara has consistently been at the forefront of applying machine learning, predictive analytics, and large-scale data modeling to solve complex communications and marketing challenges. That work now culminates in Tunnl, where proprietary data, predictive intelligence, and AI combine to power the next generation of audience intelligence.

Before becoming an entrepreneur, Sara served as White House Political Director for President George W. Bush and was a senior strategist on his successful 2004 re-election campaign, overseeing opinion research and paid media strategy. Following the election, The Wall Street Journal recognized her as a “data whiz” who helped pioneer the use of political microtargeting at scale.

Sara is also an NBC News Contributor, where she provides analysis on national politics, government, and public opinion.