About the project:

Our youth voter advocacy project (formerly known as The Largest Generation) was founded in 2020 to increase youth voter registration and turnout by providing clear, nonpartisan information in a range of easily shareable forms, using humor and visual impact to enhance the appeal of the factual content. We began with our home base of New York City, and then designed voter-registration graphics to reach youth in ten states where the youth vote was predicted to have the greatest impact the 2020 election, as determined by research from CIRCLE at Tufts University: Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

In addition to state-specific graphics, we generated many graphics that can be used anywhere and in any election year. If you would like to use any of our graphics in your voter-registration or voter-outreach campaigns, they’re free! Just contact us for permission (or for customized versions of our images) and tag us with #thelargestgeneration if you use them on social.

We began our work in 2020 as a collaboration between two New York City-based voter-advocacy activists, Jeanne Heifetz and Kim Sillen. In 2024, we are working with LiftEveryVote.org to register and pre-register high-school students across the country. Please join us there!

Founders

Jeanne Heifetz: A longtime voting rights volunteer, curator and artist, Jeanne created and maintains WeAreNewYorkValues.org, a site dedicated to channeling volunteer energy into New York City-based nonprofits. She has a long history of organizing, most recently coordinating numerous volunteer teams in New York City in support of Amendment 4 in Florida to restore voting rights to disenfranchised Floridians with past criminal histories—resulting in 1.7 million citizens regaining their rights, although many of them still face hurdles, as the state has not fully restored these formally incarcerated individuals’ voting rights.  

Kim Sillen: An artist and graphic designer who organizes creative collaborations to reach civic-minded ends, Kim recently earned a Masters of Public Administration (MPA) at Baruch College; her thesis focused on ways to increase the youth voter turnout. Combing her research on the youth vote and her experience in creating public messaging for the City of New York as a designer, she created a visual campaign aimed at increasing the number of young people who cast a ballot. Her youth voter advocacy campaign will be displayed on LinkNYC prior to the 2020 election.

Advisor

Bernadette Ludwig, PhD:  Associate Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Civic Engagement Minor at Wagner College, in Staten Island, NY. Dr. Ludwig is also the Director of the school’s Civic Engagment Minor. Her research focuses on the Liberian refugees in Staten Island and how they assert their agency to respond to imposed racial and gender hierarchies and refugee (resettlement) policies. In collaboration with several students she founded the College’s voter advocacy organization project, WagnerVotes, and she is a consultant for the Largest Generation Youth Advocacy Project.

2020 Team Members (Interns)

Erica Levenson (Team Manager): Erica is a fourth-year student at The New School majoring in Global Studies and double minoring in Race & Ethnicity and French Studies. She also works for the International Rescue Committee once a week as a volunteer English tutor to French-speaking refugee youth. She has been accepted into an accelerated MA Program for International Affairs at The New School and is expected to graduate with her MA in 2022.

Robin Grathwohl graduated from Colorado College with a degree in Environmental Science and a focus in Education. She is dedicated to addressing the climate crisis, and to convincing the Largest Generation to vote like their lives depend on it.

Margaret Myaskovskaya graduated with a political science degree from Baruch College. Her previous experiences at the American Red Cross and the Office of Council Member Ben Kallos also instilled a sense of public service.

Leila Ribeiro is an artist and activist based in New York. As a Fine Arts major at LaGuardia High School, she has a passion for graphic design, photography, sustainable fashion, and social justice. Leila previously collaborated with Kim Sillen and Jeanne Heifetz on the Senator Portrait Project, an artist collective dedicated to promoting sensible gun legislation.

Griffin Schneider is a business management major from Minnesota attending Wagner College. He is also a member of the Wagner Seahawks baseball team.