Kirk Skodis

Kirk Skodis is the Founder and Executive Director of D.O.P.E. (Dept. of Public Education), an NYC-based entertainment lab making short-form content built to win in the feed while building real civic literacy.

He also co-owns and runs Real Pie Media, a 25-year-old digital creative agency whose entertainment clients include Netflix, A24, Disney, Paramount, and Sony.

Kirk spent his career as an Executive Creative Director in attention economics — figuring out how to make people watch things they weren't planning to watch. D.O.P.E. applies that same discipline to democracy: instead of another civics explainer nobody asks for, it makes content people choose to watch, then uses that attention to install functional voter skills — how to read a job description for elected office, how to separate campaign promises from actual authority, how to use track record as a hiring signal.

He lives in New York City, where he splits his attention between Broadway openings, Shakespeare in the Park, and the entertainment industry's stranger corners.