by Jason Gilbert



The Chief Technology Officer for Barack Obama's re-election campaign probably does not look like what you think he looks like.



In fact, Harper Reed -- the Obama for America CTO who led a highly-regarded team of engineers in support of last November's victorious candidate -- likes to compare his looks to those of his predecessor, the CTO for Obama's 2008 campaign, as he did in this side-by-side photo he showed while speaking at Rhizome's Seven by Seven conference in April:

















No, Reed is not the buttoned-up, neatly-coiffed exec you might expect to run the technology behind the most important election in America; but regardless of his sartorial choices, or the way he shapes his bangs in the morning, Reed has achieved unqualified triumphs, both as CTO for Threadless, the popular online T-shirt storefront, and then as CTO for President Obama's reelection run.



In other words: You may question his beard, but you can't question his success.



Since November 2012, Reed has turned away from politics, turning his attention to a stealthy mobile payments app (as well as a repository of pizza GIFs). And though he's no longer plying his trade in Washington D.C., he did reflect on what made the Democrats successful in 2012, what doomed the GOP's chances and a couple of the issues that may define the race in 2016 in a recent sit-down interview with Yahoo! News.



You can watch our interview with Reed below, and hit him up on Twitter at @Harper:











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You can follow @YahooTech on Twitter.

















