Elona Vaisnys
Contact Elona:
evaisnys@lwvil.org
Director
Elona Vaisnys has served on LWV of Illinois’ Board of Directors since June 2025.
Elona Vaisnys joined LWV in Connecticut. She increased membership in her local League. To counter both main political parties’ moves to kill Connecticut’s public campaign financing program for state elective offices, she raised that program’s visibility in talks at universities and to organizations. She also gave talks on money in politics and civic topics, moderated debates, issue forums, and town halls. She wrote a by-lined column on civic topics (“On Your Own Time”) and had opeds published in national and Connecticut papers.
She served as LWVUS National Coach (Shur Fellow) and did a presentation on the League on behalf of LWVUS at a convention of women in a post-communist country in Europe.
Elona was sworn in at the White House as Commissioner on a Presidential Commission to assess U.S. preparedness in diplomacy, international trade, and national security and to make recommendations to the President. Illinois Senator Paul Simon was a fellow Commissioner.
Professionally, Elona worked in the Connecticut Office of Policy and Management, managed a hospital’s health promotion/disease prevention programs, produced a radio call-in show on medical topics (“Take One A Month”), wrote/produced medical information scripts for daily radio broadcast, and was a consultant for a health-related show on Connecticut Public Television (“Better Health”). She was the editor (22 years) for Yale University’s five engineering departments, bid on behalf of Connecticut and Yale for international science fairs, wrote a column for the internationally distributed Yale Alumni Magazine, and headed statewide projects.
While on the executive committee of the (national) Lithuanian American Community, Elona was elected to the Republic of Lithuania Parliament / World Lithuanian Community Commission that met in Lithuania. She currently serves on the board of Lituanus, a journal of arts and sciences.
Relocated to Chicago, in 2021-23 Elona served on the board of LWV of Chicago as membership director.