Lorella Praeli

Lorella Praeli is the co-president of Community Change & Community Change Action.

Praeli is passionate about building collective power to win transformative policy change at all levels of government, so that people can thrive. Until she joined CC/A in 2019, she was a deputy national political director at the ACLU, where she fought to defend and expand the rights of immigrants and refugees. Prior to joining the ACLU, Praeli mobilized the Latinx vote as Hillary Clinton’s National Latino Vote Director.

Praeli moved from Peru to Connecticut with her family at the age of ten. Her life was transformed after coming out as “undocumented and unafraid” and organizing undocumented students to step into their power in Connecticut. She then served as United We Dream’s director of advocacy and policy, where she led the campaign to implement DACA and was part of the team that persuaded the Obama administration to protect four million undocumented Americans through DAPA.

Praeli currently serves as a member of the ACLU National Board, Edward W. Hazen Foundation Board of Trustees, FWD.us Board of Directors, Roosevelt Forward Board of Directors, and the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) Board of Directors. She is also a member of the inaugural U.S. Treasury Advisory Committee on Racial Equity (TACRE).

Sub-specialties:

Immigration: path to citizenship, inclusion in economic policies, immigrant voters, DACA, TPS, immigration enforcement, immigrant rights movement

Politics: new voter engagement and relational organizing, electoral politics, changing demographics and expanding the electorate, democracy and voting rights, debates in Congress, the Biden administration, progressive politics, Latino politics

Care economy: child care policy and the child care movement, the child tax credit and earned income tax credit, SNAP and TANF, racial equity in housing policy, the anti-poverty movement, economic justice movements, income inequality and the wealth gap, disability rights

Social justice: racial and gender economic inequality, safety beyond policing, racial equity, protest and social movements