Elena grew up in rural Montana, on occupied Niitsítapi and Salish Kootenai land. She is committed to supporting immigrant, Indigenous, and other communities impacted by U.S. militarism and bordering regimes, as they build local and transnational movements toward abolition.  

Elena joined Pangea in October 2023. Previously, she defended immigrants facing deportation as part of NYU's Immigrant Rights Clinic and the Advanced Immigrant Rights Clinic. In her final year of law school, Elena represented a detained client through an emergency habeas petition. She also supported a coalition of asylum seekers who had been targeted by the Trump administration under a punitive civil fines provision because of their immigrant rights advocacy. Elena represented the coalition through FOIA litigation, a federal civil rights lawsuit, and a public campaign. DHS rescinded the policy and ultimately granted deferred action to each individual plaintiff.

As a law student, Elena interned with the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City, contributing to CCR's Palestinian solidarity work, supporting Black communities in Louisiana organizing against environmental racism, and crafting a federal sovereignty strategy with the Ramapough Lenape Nation. Additionally, Elena co-organized a project to document and amplify abolitionist organizing and policy proposals around the United States following the 2020 uprisings. The project is now integrated into the DefundPolice.org resource hub.

Before law school, Elena participated in transnational human rights work through policy advocacy, research, and journalism. She worked alongside Syrian refugee communities in Lebanon facing unlawful state coercion to return to Syria, documented labor violations against South Asian migrant workers in Jordanian garment factories, and supported Afro-Brazilian favela residents in Rio de Janeiro working to stop police violence and forced evictions during the 2014 World Cup.

Elena holds a B.A. in Political Science and a certificate in Multidisciplinary Human Rights from Yale College ('17). She received her law degree from New York University School of Law (’22), where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar, an Institute for International Law and Justice Scholar, and a Center for Human Rights & Global Justice Human Rights Scholar. Elena is licensed to practice law in New York. She clerked for the Honorable Brian M. Morris, Chief Judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana. Elena speaks English, Arabic, and Spanish, and rusty Italian, Portuguese, and French.