Originally from rural Montana, Elena attended the United World College of the Adriatic, a 2-year international IB school in Northern Italy, and Yale University, where she studied Political Science. At Yale, she participated in the inaugural class of a 3-year Multidisciplinary Academic Program in Human Rights through Yale Law School. For her program capstone, she created a resource mapping initiative for local refugees and asylum seekers. Elena has extensive international experience with community-based research and advocacy. During the 2014 World Cup, she worked as a human rights journalist for a local favela rights nonprofit, covering police violence, forced evictions, and environmental violations in Rio de Janeiro. The following summer, she worked with the International Labour Organization to document labor violations in Jordanian garment factories. She returned to Jordan to undertake archival Arabic-language research for her undergraduate thesis, which explored Jordanian governance and Palestinian-Jordanians’ rights since the 1970s.

After graduating from university, Elena spent a summer back in Montana as a research intern for the Montana Human Rights Network, focusing primarily on access to healthcare and LGBTQ rights. Elena then moved to Lebanon. In Beirut, she spent four months with Legal Agenda researching post-conflict judicial independence, comparing South Africa, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, and Belgium. She then spent a year directing research and advocacy for SAWA for Development and Aid, a local NGO that works with Syrian refugees in informal settlements. Elena speaks Arabic, Portuguese, and Italian. After law school, Elena hopes to continue working with forcibly displaced communities to promote access to justice and more accountable, dignifying approaches to human rights and humanitarianism.