We Are the Leaders, Issue #11, Elissa Slotkin

by BREAKTHRU Team

January 16th, 2026

Dear Leaders,

The day before I published last week’s letter, we all witnessed some news that hit painfully close to home. In the moment, I was too overwhelmed to focus on it, but I am more ready this week.

As you know, A 37-year-old woman named Renee Nicole Good was killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minneapolis. She leaves behind three children, a wife, friends, and a community still struggling to make sense of her death.

As someone who identifies as a gay woman, like Renée, this isn’t just another headline. It feels personal. There are moments when her death feels like it could have been any of us, here in our hometown of Oak Park, where ICE sightings, and our acts of resistance to them, have become a daily reality over the past few months. And hearing homophobic commentary and rushed assumptions about her life and wife creates a new sense of vulnerability and pain, a reminder that safety can no longer be assumed.

As I was researching Elissa Slotkin this week for this newsletter, I found myself watching footage of her October 29, 2025 speech, and it felt eerily prescient. Slotkin didn’t speak with hyperbole. She spoke with foresight. She urged us to notice patterns before they turn into tragedies.

Reflecting on January 6, she said plainly:

“I had a failure of imagination back then. But my imagination is working just fine now, and I’m not going to make the same mistake.”

Watching that speech now, in the wake of Renée’s death and amid the increasing presence of militarized enforcement on American streets, that clarity feels not just relevant, but necessary to hear.

This Week’s Reflection: Elissa Slotkin and the Power of the Guide

In the BREAKTHRU framework, The Guide is the leader who helps people make sense of complexity, without oversimplifying, without inflaming fear, and without sacrificing truth.

That instinct didn’t emerge accidentally for Elissa Slotkin. It was shaped early.

Elissa Slotkin grew up on her family’s farm in Holly, Michigan, the daughter of Judith and Curt Slotkin. Her parents eventually divorced, and her mother came out as gay during the height of the AIDS epidemic, a moment that profoundly shaped Slotkin’s own political identity. Her father was a longtime Republican and Reagan supporter, and Slotkin has said she became a Democrat because she saw how government indifference to the AIDS crisis affected people she cared about.

She was in graduate school on September 11th, her second day, in fact, and by the time the smoke cleared, she knew her life had changed. Almost overnight, she decided to go into national security and public service.

As a CIA analyst and Pentagon official, Slotkin spent years working in environments where mistakes carried real-world consequences. She learned that information must be handled carefully, not softened, not exaggerated, but translated clearly so people could act wisely. In those roles, clarity wasn’t a communication style. It was a necessity.

That orientation, toward context, consequence, and care, shows up consistently in her public leadership.

And it was fully on display in her October 29 speech at the Brookings Institution.

Slotkin didn’t mirror political theatrics or manufacture outrage. She spoke with precision about the risks she sees to democratic institutions and warned about what happens when accountability erodes and power consolidates.

Her words weren’t designed to go viral. They were designed to orient us all to the moment.

What It Looks Like Up Close

I’ve also had the benefit of hearing about what Elissa Slotkin’s leadership looks like behind the scenes.

Our niece, Ellie Edgell, served as Slotkin’s Director of Special Projects for her 2024 campaign and worked on her winning campaigns in 2018 and 2020, helping flip a Trump +7 district from red to blue and then hold it in her first re-election.

What Ellie describes again and again is Slotkin’s ability to keep people grounded in the mission. After years working alongside the military, Slotkin is exceptionally good at distinguishing what is existential from what is distraction. In an era where chaos is often intentional, where the goal is to flood the zone, she brings focus. She helps teams understand where to put their energy, their resources, and their attention.

Ellie told me that when politics feels overwhelming or frightening, Slotkin always has a way forward, not a soundbite, but a steady path. She doesn’t let people see her shaken. And she has a rare ability to distill complexity into plainspoken truth that people can actually act on.

“She’s incredibly good at being a steady guide in a crisis — and at helping people understand what really matters.”

What keeps Slotkin up at night, Ellie says, isn’t political theater. It’s the future of the middle class especially in Michigan and across the industrial Midwest. The long-term health of work, manufacturing, and affordability. How to translate national policy into kitchen-table math for families who are worried about costs with every headline.

That concern, grounded, specific, human, explains why her leadership resonates.

When a Guide Names the Moment

In her October 29 speech, Slotkin did something we don’t see nearly enough in public life: she named emerging national risks plainly, without exaggeration.

She warned that the federal government was increasingly willing to use force inside American cities and that escalation was not theoretical:

“In some cases, these federal officers are playing fast and loose with their tactics — which sooner or later could lead to a deadly escalation.”

She wasn’t speculating. She was recognizing patterns. Slotkin was even more direct and careful to say why she was speaking so directly:

“I am not an alarmist. I don’t say things casually.”

And then she named what she believes sits at the center of this moment:

“He has one goal — making sure that he and his ilk never have to give up power.”

That wasn’t rhetoric for effect. It was an assessment shaped by years of national security work and a deep understanding of how power behaves when it believes it may never have to answer to anyone.

Slotkin’s method is not to inflame fear, but to slow the moment down to help people understand before deciding what comes next. She speaks with context and caution, trusting that citizens deserve clarity, not panic.

As she reminded the room and those would listen:

“Don’t give up the ship.”

From Reflection to Action

Slotkin’s leadership invites us to ask:

Who are the Guides in my life, the people who can deliver facts when we need them most?
After so many years of hard-won progress, how can grounding help embolden us not to abandon the ship?
Where might clarity rather than outrage be the most powerful contribution right now?

Until Next Week

Next week, I will bring to focus, Reshma Saujani, who has been a tireless fighter for women and is currently celebrating some progress she has had in NYC around childcare.

And, if you have any suggestions of folks I should research, please drop me a line.

Lindsay Gaskins

Co-Founder and CEO of BREAKTHRU