Monica Klein and Elana Leopold

As the cofounders of Seneca Strategies, named after the site of the first women’s rights convention in the U.S., Monica Klein and Elana Leopold provide a one-stop consulting shop for progressive, mostly-female, candidates who are looking to run for office in the New York area. From speechwriting to communications to fundraising, the pair do it all and have worked with high-profile campaigns such as those for Cynthia Nixon and New York State Sens. Julia Salazar and Jessica Ramos.

Catering to female candidates means understanding that things like childcare, paid family leave, and the wage gap are very important, and Klein and Leopold, who met while working for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, encourage their clients to speak up about those issues. The pair even worked with candidate Liuba Grechen Shirley to get the Federal Election Commission to agree that childcare was a campaign expense, something that wasn’t allowed until 2018.

When they’re not consulting, they also run the Broad Room, a political action training camp for young women and those who identify as nonbinary.