Elena Ethel Schlein was born on 4 May 1985 in
Lugano, Switzerland.[3][4] Her father, Melvin Schlein, is an American academic and political scientist of
Ashkenazi Jewish descent.[4][5] Her mother, Maria Paola Viviani, is a professor of comparative public law at the
University of Insubria.[6] Originally, her paternal grandfather's surname was Schleyen; after arriving at
Ellis Island, he changed it to Schlein.[4] Her maternal grandfather was the
Italian Socialist Party politician
Agostino Viviani [
it], senator from 1972 to 1979 and a member of the
High Council of the Judiciary.[7] Her paternal ancestors were from
Zhovkva, now located in Ukraine, and her paternal grandmother, from whom she takes the middle name "Ethel", was of
Lithuanian origin.[4] She has a sister who is a diplomat by profession and a brother who is a mathematician.[8]
In 2008 and 2012, Schlein volunteered on
Barack Obama's two presidential campaigns in the United States.[9] In 2011, she was one of the founders of the association of university students known as Progrè, an association that dealt with deepening and sensitising public opinion on issues related to migration policies and the prison reality.[11]
In May 2015, Schlein announced through a post on Facebook that she was leaving the PD, being in deep disagreement with the new political line of the party impressed by the party secretary and Italy's prime minister
Matteo Renzi, and joined
Possible, the party founded by Civati.[16] In April 2019, Schlein announced her intention not to run in the
2019 European Parliament election in Italy.[17]
Vice-president of Emilia-Romagna, 2020–2022
In the
2020 Emilia-Romagna regional election on 26 January, Schlein ran as a candidate for member of the regional council of
Emilia-Romagna as part of a left-wing electoral alliance called Emilia-Romagna Courageous Ecologist and Progressive.[18][19] She was elected with over 22,000 votes, the highest vote tally for a councillor in regional history, and was subsequently appointed by
Stefano Bonaccini as his vice-president.[20][21][22] In February 2020, the PD's secretary
Nicola Zingaretti offered Schlein the party presidency spot left vacant by
Paolo Gentiloni.[9]
2022 general election and Democratic Party leadership run
In the
general election held on 26 September 2022, she was elected to the country's
Chamber of Deputies.[23][24] A few weeks later, following Letta's resignation as
leader of the PD, Schlein announced her run for the
2023 PD leadership election.[25] In an upset,[26] for the first time in the party's leadership elections, Schlein overcame the second place of the closed primary,[27] by winning the open primary on 26 February 2023,[28] when she was successfully elected ahead of
Stefano Bonaccini.[29][30] In doing so, she became the PD's first female, as well as the youngest person,[31] to be elected leader of the PD since the formation of the party in 2007.[32] She is also the first publicly-declared LGBTQ secretary of the Italian center-left leading party. During her rise in the party, she has been compared to American congresswoman
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.[33] She succeeded Letta on 12 March 2023.[34]
On 18 April 2023, Schlein expressed her personal opinion in favour of
surrogacy.[35]
Schlein, Elly (2018).
"L'Europa tra riforma della Convenzione di Dublino, muri e migration compact" [Europe between the reform of the Dublin Convention, walls and migration compact]. In Calabrò, Anna Rita (ed.). Quaderni del Master in 'Immigrazione, Genere, Modelli Familiari e Strategie di Integrazione' n. 4: Strategie per un mondo nuovo: prospettive di gestione dei flussi migratori provenienti dall'Africa (in Italian). Ledizioni. pp. 111–118.
ISBN978-88-6705-893-8.
Schlein, Elly (Winter 2018).
"Migration is not an emergency"(PDF). Great Insights. 7 (1): 18–19. Archived from
the original(PDF) on 20 January 2022. Retrieved 26 September 2022.