About Mike Sertic

Mike Sertic is President of the Advocates for Self-Government, creator of Political DNA, and a student of how free people govern themselves, in politics and in organizations.

Mike Sertic is President of the Advocates for Self-Government, the nonprofit behind the World's Smallest Political Quiz, which has been taken by approximately 30 million people. He is the creator of Political DNA, an assessment that maps political identity across 32 archetypes. Before becoming President of the Advocates in 2017, he served on the 2010 Executive Board of Students For Liberty, where he founded the Sacramento State chapter, and worked at the Self-Management Institute at Morning Star Company, studying how large organizations operate without managers. His work centers on one idea: self-government is a practice, not just a principle. He lives in the Sacramento area.

Mike Sertic is President of the Advocates for Self-Government, a 501(c)(3) libertarian educational nonprofit founded in 1985 and best known for the World's Smallest Political Quiz. The Quiz has been taken by approximately 30 million people and remains one of the most widely used political self-assessment tools ever created. Since taking the role in 2017, Sertic has led the organization's strategy, fundraising, operations, and programs, including Quiz in the Classroom, which brings nonpartisan political education into schools, and Operation Politically Homeless, a grassroots outreach format used at thousands of public events.

He is also the creator of Political DNA, an independent assessment he designed and built. Where most political quizzes place a person on a single left-to-right line, Political DNA maps individuals across 32 distinct archetypes, giving people a fuller picture of what they believe before they decide how to act on it.

Sertic's work rests on a single idea: self-government is a practice, not just a principle. He came to it through two formative experiences. As a student at California State University, Sacramento, he founded the campus chapter of Students For Liberty in 2010 and served on the organization's Executive Board that year, during the period when SFL grew into the largest international network of pro-liberty students. There he watched students who discovered where they actually stood politically begin to organize, write, and lead.

He then joined the Self-Management Institute at Morning Star Company, the world's largest tomato processor and one of the most studied examples of a large organization operating without managers. At Morning Star, thousands of colleagues coordinate through written peer-to-peer agreements rather than a chain of command. Sertic studied how that system works in daily operations and how its principles can be taught to other organizations. The experience convinced him that self-governance is a skill people can learn and practice at work, in the same way they can learn to reason about politics.

That intersection, liberty education on one side and self-managed organizations on the other, is the through-line of his work. He speaks to conferences, podcasts, universities, and organizations on political self-understanding, nonpartisan civic education, and how groups can run themselves with clear agreements instead of hierarchy.

He holds a B.A. in Economics from California State University, Sacramento. He lives in the Sacramento region with his wife and two daughters.