Kelly Mena is a state and local policy reporter at CNN based in Washington, DC. She covers state and local policy changes that affect election-day voting like voter ID laws, expanded absentee voting, and felony voting rights restoration.

Before joining CNN, Mena began her career in journalism in Florida at Noticias WUFT-FM. Additionally, she has reported for the Brooklyn Eagle and Kings County Politics, where she covered New York’s affordable housing crisis, the rise of progressive and socialist political movements in the Democratic party and, the issue of gun violence.

Mena was also half of the investigative reporting team that uncovered illegal seizures of Black and Latino properties in Brooklyn by the city, which led to a landmark court decision and a feature in the 2019 Whitney Biennial as well as a state probe into the controversial program.

A Cambridge, Massachusetts native, Mena grew up in Florida where she earned a bachelor’s degree in telecommunications from the University of Florida.