She was 26 and worked at a major New York law firm, but she refused to condemn an open letter addressed to dozens of law firms that had urged law school deans to crack down on antisemitism on university campuses, at a time when students were protesting the slaughter in Gaza. Kiros condemned antisemitism, but warned law firms, including the one she worked for, against confusing “bigotry with the geopolitical question of Israel’s legitimacy.” This cost her her job. She, however, was not discouraged, as she belongs to a generation that is no longer willing to set aside its values for the sake of a career.
Since then, Kiros has devoted herself more intensely to politics, and yesterday, in the midterm elections, she won as Colorado’s representative to the House of Representatives. Before her, only one other Gen Z representative, Democrat Maxwell Frost of Florida, had made it to Parliament in 2022, but she became the first Gen Z woman in Congress. Melat Kiros was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, but moved to Denver with her family when she was still a baby and grew up there.
She graduated from Washington College in Maryland in 2018, where she studied political science and economics, before earning a law degree from the University of Notre Dame in 2022. Today she is a lawyer and is pursuing a doctorate in public policy. In the meantime, however, she also works as a barista.
It is not easy to balance a political career with her studies, but it is worth it. After being fired, Kiros returned to Colorado and, in 2024, joined the election campaign of Democratic congressional candidate John Padora as communications director. It was excellent training for her, so much so that, two years later, she decided to run for Congress herself.
On her side, she has strong political positions—she supports universal health care and child care, but also more politically controversial issues, such as abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and ending U.S. military aid to Israel. Her ideals openly align with her actions, and in fact during the election campaign she refused funding from corporate PACs and pro-Israel groups, while also sharply criticizing her Democratic primary opponent Diana DeGette, who had instead accepted donations from defense contractors as well as energy and pharmaceutical companies. It is clear that Kiros's mark is different: She shows us what Gen Z can and will be able to do when it is given space.
In this sense, her election also fits well into the climate of student protests, in Europe and around the world, by a generation that wants to make its voice heard. Yet it is still not easy: According to research by Future Caucus, more than 100 Generation Z candidates ran in the 2026 midterm elections for Congress, but the study found that young candidates were less likely to make it to the general election than other age groups, with only 24 of them appearing on the November ballots. Kiros also had to face paternalism and dismissive attitudes from those who considered her unsuitable and inexperienced.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
