At this week's Round Table, new podcasters Emily and Heba joined Jack and Skyla to speak with Brianna Carmen, political director at Emerge. Emerge is the nation's premier organization that recruits and trains Democratic women to run for office. At Emerge, Brianna not only gets to work through partners at the local state and national level, but also develops strategies for operationalizing all of their training. She has helped Emerge support 1,200+ alums currently in public office and has helped register 600,000 voters, with a focus on youth.
Being raised along the U.S-Mexico border in El Paso, Brianna saw firsthand a community that was impacted by many key issues yet lacked widespread voter participation and political power needed to address them. Her life experiences in an underrepresented community shaped her passion for being involved in large-scale impactful work.
With Gen Z demographically being the most racial and ethnically diverse constituency in most communities, Brianna feels that youth today possess the widest arrays of perspectives and ideas to resolve ongoing issues. She shared with us that “Having more women who are Democrats elected into office will lead to better policies because they are the folks who are dealing with these challenges every day. So why shouldn’t they have a seat at the table to change it?” She is very committed to debunking the myth that young activists don't have the experience or networks to be successful on the campaign trail. Towards this end, Emerge is working hard to both encourage Gen Z to run AND to set them up for success on the campaign trail. This is our 200th podcast episode ( !) and we are grateful to you for listening!rge is the nation's premier organization that recruits and trains Democratic women to run for office.
