09/03/2026
Erik Raser-Schramm’s life and career have been shaped by a simple but evolving idea: our greatest growth often comes not from the path we planned, but from what we choose to do when life takes us somewhere we never expected.
For more than 25 years, Erik has worked at the intersection of public service, politics, community building, leadership, advocacy, and, more recently, wellness and healing. His professional journey has taken him from classrooms and community service to campaign war rooms, Legislative Hall, county government, statewide leadership, historic preservation, and spaces devoted to recovery and personal transformation.
A graduate of SUNY Geneseo with a degree in Elementary and Special Education, Erik began his post-college life in service through AmeriCorps*VISTA, working first with the Colorado Department of Education and later with the Delaware Mentoring Council. That experience ultimately helped root him in Delaware and launched a career in public service that would span more than two decades.
Erik entered Delaware politics in 2002 as campaign manager for State Senator Dave Sokola’s reelection campaign. He went on to work on Governor Ruth Ann Minner’s reelection, manage statewide campaigns, serve as Legislative Liaison in the Minner administration, and become Chief of Staff in the Delaware House of Representatives, including serving as Chief of Staff to Speaker Robert Gilligan. He later founded Twelve Seven Group, a Delaware consulting firm specializing in grassroots organizing, advocacy, strategy, and fundraising.
In 2017, Erik was elected Chair of the Delaware Democratic Party. During his tenure, Democrats expanded their coalition and electoral success across the state, culminating in the historic 2020 election cycle, when Delaware’s Joe Biden was elected President of the United States. Erik subsequently joined New Castle County government as Deputy Chief Administrative Officer, helping oversee the day-to-day operations of Delaware’s largest county and working on initiatives ranging from pandemic recovery to the investment of federal ARPA resources. He later served as Chief of Staff to Delaware Auditor of Accounts Lydia York.
But Erik’s story cannot be told through job titles alone.
Behind a career built around campaigns, deadlines, public expectations, leadership, and taking care of others was a person who eventually had to learn how to take care of himself.
His journey through sobriety, recovery, grief, significant health challenges, cancer, major personal transitions, and the sometimes uncomfortable work of rediscovering who he was beyond his professional identity fundamentally changed the direction of his life. What began as a search for healing became a new way of understanding leadership, wellness, vulnerability, connection, and purpose.
Erik began exploring practices including meditation, breathwork, sound healing, forest therapy, mindfulness, and firewalking—not as an escape from life’s difficulties, but as tools for learning how to move through them. Today, he is a certified Forest Therapy Guide, Sound Healer and Firewalk Instructor and the founder of Odessa Wellness Center, where he creates experiences centered on stillness, reflection, connection, personal growth, and healing. His work includes sound baths, forest bathing, meditation, breathwork, retreats, and other restorative practices.
His professional and personal worlds have increasingly come together around one lesson: leadership is not simply about how effectively we lead organizations or other people. It is also about how honestly we are willing to know and lead ourselves.
Public service remains central to Erik’s life. He served as Director of Delaware 250, helping lead Delaware’s statewide commemoration of the 250th anniversary of American independence and working with communities and organizations across all three counties to ensure the milestone reflected the breadth of Delaware’s stories. Today, he serves in the Office of Governor Matt Meyer as Administrator of Woodburn, Delaware’s historic Governor’s Residence—bringing together his longtime commitment to public service with his love of history, storytelling, hospitality, and community.
Erik also continues to serve nonprofit and community organizations, including organizations supporting children and families and recovery communities.
Perhaps the role that has changed him most, however, is simply being Dad.
As the father of three boys, Erik understands that success looks very different today than it did earlier in his career. Life has become less about titles, winning the next campaign, or meeting someone else’s definition of achievement and more about presence: showing up for his children, his community, the people he loves, and himself.
Erik speaks candidly about leadership, recovery, sobriety, cancer, wellness, parenting, public service, grief, resilience, major life transitions, and what happens when the identity we spent decades building no longer completely fits the person we are becoming.
His message is not about having life figured out.
It is about discovering that we can change. We can begin again. We can hold gratitude and grief at the same time. We can be successful and still struggle. We can ask for help. We can release versions of ourselves that once served us. And sometimes the most courageous form of leadership is allowing ourselves to become someone new.
After decades spent helping build campaigns, organizations, movements, communities, and institutions, Erik’s current journey is also about building something much quieter and more personal:
A life grounded in gratitude, service, authenticity, wellness, connection, and the practice of taking things one day at a time.
