economic development aid. Joe is married to Carolyn Mallahan, who he has two daughters with, Irina and Masha. Both Joe and Carolyn Mallahan are volunteers and major fundraisers for the AmeriCorps organization City Year. The family lives in Seattle's Wallingford neighborhood. Professional career Mallahan began his career working at an auditing firm in Chicago and then for Century Supply Company, where company executives were sufficiently impressed with his suggestions for improving efficiency to appoint him President of the company in 1995 at age 31. He later worked for cell-phone service provider VoiceStream, which was purchased by T-Mobile and brought Mallahan and his family back to Seattle in 2000. He was Vice President of Operations Strategy at T-Mobile. Joe left T-Mobile in 2011 to pursue other opportunities. Political Activism Mallahan began his political activism in Chicago while working as the President of Century Supply Company. There Mallahan helped establish United Power for Action and Justice and received training and work as a community organizer from the Industrial Areas Foundation. After returning to Seattle in 2000 Mallahan worked on fellow Industrial Areas Foundation alumnus Barack Obama's presidential campaign but it was not until the 2009 Seattle mayoral race that he ran for political office. In addition to his work earlier work with Representative Al Swift Mallhan later worked as a legislative aide to Washington Republican Senator Slade Gorton. Since his return to Seattle and registering to vote in April 2000 elections records in King County show that Mallahan had voted in 12 of the 25 elections he was eligible to participate in. 2009 Seattle Mayoral Campaign On April 29, 2009 Mallahan declared his candidacy in an open letter to Seattle Mayor Greg Nickles declaring city government broken, no longer providing basic services and that Nickels was out of touch. In an effort to match Nickles' already existing $280,000 campaign reserves Mallahan committed $200,000 of his own money to his campaign. In between declaring his candidacy and the primary elections Mallahan raised nearly $200,000 in additional contributions from independent sources. After successfully passing the primary election Mallahan personally contributed approximately $30,000 in additional funds and raised another $130,000 from independent sources. Mallahan received substantial criticism from people such as Mike McGinn and Washington State Senator Ed Murray who accused him of "buying his way into the campaign". On November 9 Mallahan conceded the election to Mike McGinn after losing by a margin of