Elianne Farhat has been a leader in many successful local, state and national campaigns throughout her ten years of community, labor, and electoral organizing. The first in father’s family to be born in the United States, she is passionate about building power in New American communities and in 2008 joined the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant & Refugee Rights’ non-partisan voter registration and mobilization campaign. From that first professional organizing job onward, Elianne’s commitment to building power in low-income communities of color has been a constant thread through her diverse work experience – whether that be while organizing New American voters in Chicago, electing Minnesota’s first DFL governor in more than 20 years, or advancing strategic campaigns to secure historic policy wins for working families.

Prior to joining TakeAction, Elianne held the position of Fair Workweek Campaign Director at the Center for Popular Democracy. While there she worked closely with local partner organizations, labor unions, and national advocacy groups to advance a national strategy elevating the work-hours crisis people working in the service sector face. Her leadership contributed to corporate policy change across the retail industry and six historic policy victories impacting more than a million working people.

Elianne worked as TakeAction’s Program Director managing and integrating our work across communications, organizing, political, and strategic campaigns departments. In 2018, she became TakeAction’s Executive Director and is now responsible for operationalizing the ambitious vision of TakeAction Minnesota’s leadership into concrete and meaningful action.

She currently serves as Board Co-Chair at Headwaters Foundation for Justice and earned a B.A. in Geography and Political Science from Macalester College.