Hayden J. Emmet

Senior Advisor

As Senior Advisor at Movement Voter Project, Hayden works alongside the Executive Director and senior team to help MVP tackle structural, strategic, and adaptive challenges to meet this moment — so we can build the grassroots power we need to transform our country. 

Hayden grew up in the working-class, immigrant community of East Boston, Massachusetts. By the time he left for Brandeis University on scholarship, most of the kids he grew up with were mired in struggles that would define their lives. He has dedicated his career to understanding and disrupting the dynamics that constrain people's lives and leave them shot through with unnecessary pain and suffering.

Alongside his cross-functional work at MVP, Hayden anchors several key initiatives, including a partnership with movement leader Doran Schrantz at the Pivot Project and researcher-trainer Joy Cushman at the Democracy & Power Innovation Fund. Together, they work alongside MVP's program team to sharpen its state power-building strategy — and help MVP and its partners build the multiyear, multiracial power not just to beat back authoritarianism, but to move us forward.

Hayden brings over 25 years of experience at the intersection of movement strategy, politics, and organizational change. Before joining MVP, he was Deputy Chief of Staff at the Working Families Party (WFP), where he supported Maurice Mitchell, WFP National Director, in revamping WFP's organizing strategy. Earlier, he spent over a decade at SEIU, ultimately as Deputy National Political Director, where he developed the union’s Capacity Building program and helped build and run the largest PAC in the country.

Through his consulting practice, HJE Strategies, he has served as a senior advisor to movement organizations like CASA in Action, Pennsylvania United, National Korean American Service and Education Consortium (NAKASEC), and Communications Workers of America (CWA).

Hayden's work is shaped by a conviction that the health of our movements is inseparable from the health of the people who build them — that becoming healthier ourselves expands the change we can make in the world. 

Hayden lives in Washington, D.C., with his partner, Olivia, and their three-legged corgi-chihuahua, Neville. After spending the first forty-five or so years of his life walking around in his head, he has come to love the practices that bring him into his body and tether him to this earth — from Barry's Bootcamp to the occasional misogi, to being fully present with the people and creatures he loves.