CM Hall, Executive Director
CM Hall has dedicated her life to community activism, equity, and social justice. CM’s extensive experience includes teaching, political strategy, and advocacy work, which have prepared her to lead Emerge Oregon in empowering Democratic women to run for office. She is a 2012 alum of the Emerge candidate training program and served as the organization’s former board chair. She brings her talents as a campaign operative, working on campaigns at federal, state, and local levels for candidates and ballot measures, as an educator, and as a fundraiser to the signature program in its fifteenth year.
She is in her second term on the Newport City Council and was elected as the first openly queer councilor in 2018 and currently serves as Council President. Hall has been honored for her service, leadership, and activism by Basic Rights Oregon, Pride Northwest, the Gay & Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest, Campus Pride, the Human Rights Campaign, Western Oregon University’s Stonewall Center, the Oregon Association of the Deaf, the Oregon Deaf & Hard of Hearing Advisory Committee, and the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf. In 2015, she presented a TED Talk on linguistic access as a social justice issue.
CM currently serves on the board of Oregon Humanities and previously has served on the boards of Basic Rights Oregon, the Human Rights Campaign, Oregon Stonewall Democrats, Newport Oregon Pride and the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf.
Hall is a certified sign language interpreter and also hosts and produces the Her Own Wings podcast featuring Oregon women in government. CM received her Master’s in Education with an emphasis in LGBTQ and Gender Studies from Oregon State University and her undergraduate degree from Western Oregon University in Interpreting. Hall is currently enrolled in the Harvard Kennedy School’s Executive Education program pursuing a specialized certificate in Public Leadership.
Contact:
cm@emergeor.org
503-888-7172
Annie Ellison, Senior Advisor
Annie Ellison has criss-crossed the country working on campaigns for progressive Democrats from statewide to statehouse offices, City Council and Congress in the Midwest, South, East Coast, Oregon and California.
Before joining Emerge, Annie worked with women candidates up and down the ballot, including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, Assemblywoman Joann Downey in New Jersey, and Sen. Wendy Davis in Texas.
She also served as spokesperson in the Capitol Hill office of Congressman Ami Bera (D-CA-07), as communications director for his tough 2016 re-election, and as communications director for Mayor Ted Wheeler’s first successful Mayoral campaign.
She lives in NE Portland with her wife Hallie, their daughters Iona and Maud, and two cats Ruth and Simon.