Elena Goldstein

Legal Director

Elena Goldstein is a Legal Director at Democracy Forward. 

Elena served most recently as the Deputy Solicitor of Labor in the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL).  As the Deputy Solicitor of Labor, Elena helped to lead DOL’s 650-person legal office, overseeing numerous litigation, regulatory, and policy matters relating to the rights of workers, job-seekers, and retirees in the United States. 

Immediately prior to serving as the Deputy Solicitor of Labor, Goldstein served as Deputy Chief of the Civil Rights Bureau in the New York State Office of the Attorney General, where she was a lead counsel in numerous cases challenging federal executive and agency actions in the forty-fifth Presidential administration and supervised a wide range of civil rights matters. 

Elena’s career also includes nine years as a senior trial attorney in DOL’s Office of the Solicitor, litigating cases involving minimum wage and overtime laws, workplace safety, whistle-blower statutes, and a variety of other labor and employment laws. Earlier in her career, she worked as a Skadden Fellow and senior staff attorney at the New York Legal Assistance Group, where she helped to start a workers’ rights project focusing on the rights of low-wage and immigrant workers, and as third grade teacher at Public School 152 in New York City.

Elena served as a law clerk for the Honorable Jed S. Rakoff in the Southern District of New York and the Honorable Robert A. Katzmann on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.  She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Michigan and is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School. Elena is currently licensed to practice in New York. Her license in Washington D.C. is pending.