LELAINE BIGELOW

Lelaine Bigelow is the Executive Director of the Georgetown Center for Poverty and Inequality. She leads work to expand economic security and opportunity and advance racial and gender equity for everyone in the U.S. through engagement, research, analysis, and ambitious policy ideas.

Previously, Lelaine was the vice president for social impact and congressional relations at the National Partnership for Women & Families, where she was responsible for creating and executing strategies to turn policy work into social change. Her accomplishments include passing the Federal Employee Paid Leave Act (FEPLA) and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA). She ran a major national campaign for paid family and medical leave that included a broad coalition of workers, business and bipartisan leaders across the country. Lelaine has extensive experience working in government and effecting change as Deputy Assistant Secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Obama Administration and in Congress, including roles with Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, Rep. Corrine Brown (D-FL), and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY).

Lelaine graduated from the University of Florida and the Graduate School of Political Management at The George Washington University. In 2012, she was named a Champion for Children by First Focus and established a National Commission on Children and Disasters in 2008.

She is the daughter of Filipino immigrants and has called many places home, but considers Pensacola, Florida her hometown. She lives a quaint city life in Capitol Hill with her husband and son. A true Filipina, she loves to cook and eat and proudly passed those same values to her energetic son.