Shenna Lee Bellows is an American political activist and former non-profit executive director, best known for her work with the American Civil Liberties Union.
Background
Shenna Bellows was born on March 23, 1975, in Greenfield, Massachusetts, the eldest daughter of Dexter Bellows, a carpenter, and Janice Colson, a nurse She grew up in Hancock, Maine, where she attended Hancock Grammar School. Bellows grew up in a struggling family.
They did not have running water or electricity, which the family could not afford, until she was in the fifth grade.
Education
Bellows graduated from Ellsworth High School in 1993. She then attended Middlebury College, graduating magna cum laude in 1997 with highest honors for her thesis in economic and environmental sustainability. During her junior year, she studied for a semester as an exchange student in San Jose, Costa Rica.
Career
Bellows was a Democratic candidate for the United States Senate in Maine, in the 2014 election. She launched her candidacy on October 23, 2013. She was defeated by incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins.
She is currently a candidate for the Maine Senate to represent the district of her hometown, Manchester, in the 2016 election.
When Bellows was 15, she was an AFS-United States of America foreign exchange student in Campos, Brazil. During high school and college, Bellows worked as a research assistant at Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory.
Bellows served as Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine for eight years. In that role, she built coalitions with both Republicans and Democrats to pass privacy and civil rights laws.
She was a leader of Mainers United for Marriage, working for seven years to pass same-sex marriage in Maine.
She was a leader on voting rights and co-chaired the 2011 Protect Maine Votes campaign to restore same day voter registration. Most recently, she organized a successful privacy campaign to require warrants for access to private cell phone communications, and she led the opposition to warrantless drone surveillance. During her time at the American Civil Liberties Union, Bellows was a leader in the Maine Choice Coalition and the Coalition for Maine Women.
She was recognized for her work to advance women's health and reproductive choice by awards from the University of Maine Women's Studies Department, Mabel Wadsworth Women's Health Center, the American Association of University Women, the Frances Perkins Center and the Maine Democratic Party.
Prior to her work at the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, Bellows was the national field organizer at the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, District of Columbia, organizing nationwide civil liberties campaigns including opposition to the Patriot Acting, where she built broad coalitions that included librarians and gun owners alike. Bellows was an AmeriCorps Volunteers in Service to America volunteer in Nashville, Tennessee.
There she assisted a start up non-profit, Community IMPACT! in developing an asset building program to promote educational and economic empowerment for young people in Nashville’s largest public housing project Bellows served as a small business development Peace Corps volunteer in Louisiana Arena de Chitré, Panama.
From 1997 to 1999 Bellows worked as a researcher and recruiter for Economists Incorporated, a privately held economic consulting firm specializing in microeconomic analysis in antitrust, regulatory and legal contexts in Washington, District of Columbia. Bellows announced on March 4, 2016 that she would run for the Maine Senate in District 14, including her hometown of Manchester and several communities in the Augusta area.
She is running as a publicly financed candidate.