The names of the two grandmothers, one Tuscan, the other emigrated to the United States from Ukraine, and a nickname that makes her a citizen of the world: the history of the family of Elena Ethel Schlein called Elly, new secretary of the Democratic Party, helps to define , in some way character, habits and behavior.
She is not offended by being called a 'nerd': the daughter of two university professors, her studies have always played an important role in her family.
And even when you entered the European Parliament in 2014, somewhat surprisingly after your commitment in the primaries in support of Pippo Civati, you have always characterized yourself with a methodical and meticulous study of the various dossiers.
But he also shares many passions with the nerds of his generation: from that for video games, with quotations that are often incomprehensible to non Monkey Island enthusiasts, to music.
A regular concertgoer, she also plays piano and guitar.
She rock and Italian singer-songwriters, but not only: she is also a great fan and lover of the Sanremo festival.
Without forgetting the cinema, also because from an early age she was a frequent visitor to the Locarno festival, in the Canton of Ticino, about forty kilometers from Lugano where she was born and lived until her maturity. In 2012 she also participated in the realization of the documentary 'Anija-La Nave' by Ronald Sejko which, recounting the collective escape from Albania, won a David di Donatello.
She is almost naturally a polyglot, also given her family background, when she was in the European Parliament she tried to greet all the other deputies in their native language.
In his multicultural family, politics has also always played an important role: his father, born in America, is a political scientist at the University of Lugano, his mother is the daughter of Agostino Viviani, an anti-fascist lawyer from Sienese della Pantera, who later became a socialist senator in the Seventy.
A little bit of America and a little bit of Italy: in fact she flew overseas twice to participate as a volunteer in Barack Obama's electoral campaigns, from which she learned a 'grassroots' style of political organization, i.e. very much based on aggregations basic, which led it to establish itself through preferences, often beyond all predictions, in all the elections in which it participated, such as that of the 2020 regional ones,
The decisive encounter for her life and her political career was the one with the city of Bologna where she enrolled at the University (first at the Dams, then in law, where she graduated) starting her political activity with Occupy Pd , in reaction to the failed election of Prodi to the presidency of the Republic.
She doesn't like to talk about her private life, much less make it a political banner: she has a partner with whom she has been living in Bologna for some time, but whose privacy she above all wants to defend.
"She's not a public figure and she doesn't intend to become one," she said.
She has two older siblings: Benjamin who teaches mathematics at the University of Zurich and Susanna, a diplomat at the Athens embassy where she recently suffered an anarchist attack.