Reprinted from the League of Women Voters of the US website
Virginia Kase Solomón has spent the past 27 years of her career fighting for social justice and civil rights. As CEO of the League of Women Voters, Virginia builds upon her vision of an inclusive democracy where every person in America has the ability and opportunity to participate and advocate for issues that matter to them. Since 2018, she has led the 102-year-old organization through a period of rapid transformation and growth focused on building power by engaging in advocacy, legislation, expanded litigation, and organizing efforts to ensure voting rights for all.
Prior to joining LWV she served as COO of CASA, an organization at the forefront of the immigrant rights movement, representing nearly 100,000 members. In that leadership role, Virginia managed the strategic growth, direction, and operations of the organization and served as a key thought leader on its politics and policy team.
Earlier in her career, Virginia served in leadership roles at various non-profit organizations where she developed grantmaking and capacity building programs for grassroots non-profits that addressed issues of urban violence, economic, racial, and social inequality. During that time, she also studied what made these activities effective and used that information to assist groups in deepening their impact and identifying opportunities for cross-sector movement building.
Virginia’s activism started in her early 20’s when she co-founded a youth-led non-profit in her hometown of Hartford, CT. Motivated by her desire to create a positive change in her community, she organized at-risk youth to build power and grow their leadership to fight for employment and educational opportunities.
Virginia is a leading advocate for participatory elections and democracy. She has testified before Congress on election administration, appeared on various television news programs, published multiple opinion pieces, and been quoted in news articles including The New York Times, Time Magazine, Glamour, and more. Virginia was a recipient of the 2019 Hispanic Heritage Award for Leadership, and in March 2020 she was named to People en Español’s Most Powerful Women of the Year List. She serves on the boards of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the Democracy Initiative, the steering committee for Open the Government, and is a member of the National Election Task Force on Election Crises. She also served on the National Archives Foundation Rightfully Hers Initiative Honorary Committee, commemorating the passage of the 19th Amendment.
Virginia holds a B.A. in Communications from the University of Maryland. She is the mother of two awesome sons and with her husband and two puppies, Chewbacca and Han Solo.