Meet Carleigh.
Carleigh is an educator and scholar, a union organizer, and vice chair of the Hampton Select Board. She’s also the mom of two awesome kids and married to a proud public middle school teacher. With a record of fighting righteous fights and winning, Carleigh is running for Congress in New Hampshireʼs First District to stand up for working families and bring new, principled, and collaborative leadership to Washington.
Today, Carleigh lives on the New Hampshire Seacoast, but her path to public service started on the Jersey Shore, where she was shaped by spirited annual family gatherings, hardworking parents, and a Catholic upbringing that taught her about solidarity and caring for others and to question authority. From an early age, Carleigh learned to listen, lead, and speak up when something wasn’t right.
After graduating from Mount Holyoke College in just three years, Carleigh followed her love for teaching and service to the Marshall Islands. There, she taught at a public school in a community still grappling with the legacy of U.S. nuclear testing and confronting climate change. Teaching and working for the Ministry of Education there sharpened her sense that it’s not enough to critique what’s broken: we must imagine and build something better.
Returning to the U.S., Carleigh earned her Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School in Religion, Ethics, and Politics and her Ph.D. in the Study of Religion from Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. As a graduate student, she worked in libraries, served as a home health aid, taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and conducted research. Carleigh was also an activist: she helped lead the successful effort to organize and unionize Harvardʼs graduate student workers and won better working conditions, including higher wages, childcare subsidies, and anti-retaliation policies so all student workers, no matter their background or status, have a voice and adequate institutional support while they produce groundbreaking scholarship.
After the 2016 election, Carleigh moved with her husband to the New Hampshire Seacoast, seeking a community that was ideologically and economically diverse with a vibrant culture of political engagement. Since 2022, she has taught as an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government about the intersections of public policy, politics, and religion as it relates to immigration, the environment, economics, labor, abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, education, religious nationalism, polarization, tribal sovereignty, and foreign affairs. Students seek out her classes as a place to engage thoughtfully and courageously with complex issues of history, faith, and power.
Carleigh has also brought her lifetime of advocacy to local government, working to elect Democrats across New Hampshire and winning a seat on the Hampton Select Board. On the Select Board, Carleigh has been an outspoken advocate for fair school funding, climate resilience, clean water, affordable and workforce housing, prudent investments in public services, and civil rights, while always being mindful of the high cost of living and property taxes. In a politically purple town, Carleigh is respected for always “doing her homework” and for her willingness to work with anyone who wants to collaborate in good faith to make things better for people in the community. When the local newspaper asked a voter to explain why she had voted for Carleigh, she replied that she “looks for candidates who are sharp, informed, dedicated, civil, reasonable, and ‘not crazy.’ Carleigh is a person who supersedes all those categories…She’s a rock star.”
Whether she’s confronting corporate polluters, joining a picket line, fighting for fair public school funding, or making sure that the neighborhood kid whose mom works the night shift gets breakfast and makes it to the school bus, Carleigh leads with purpose, humility, and humor. She shows up for everyone—queer kids, new parents, and for those who disagree with her—because she believes in us.
In Congress, Carleigh will make sure we have a representative who understands our struggles and stands up for our values, someone who listens and leads with integrity and tenacity, just as she has her whole life.
Support Carleigh because every voice counts.
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