LegiStorm

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) has now lost the same senior adviser twice.

Elana Broitman is now vice president for global government affairs at Global Citizen, an anti-poverty group. She was most recently the senator's senior adviser on national security and foreign policy.

Broitman first joined Gillibrand's office in 2009 before leaving for the Pentagon. She also registered as a lobbyist through Greenberg Traurig before rejoining the senator's office in 2018.

For MasterCard, the opportunity to snag an experienced Hill staffer must have been priceless.

Kendra Brown, who spent over a year as chief of staff for Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), started as director of public policy for the credit card company this month. 

Brown has an extensive resume of experience in and out of Congress. She spent multiple years working in Rep. Maxine Waters' (D-Calif.) office as counsel and also spent time as policy director for the Congressional Black Caucus and legislative director for Rep. Dwight Evans (D-Pa.).

Butterfield's office has not yet filled the chief of staff position. 

A senior GOP aide has traded in the Senate for one of the Pentagon's largest contractors.

Don Bergin is now director of legislative affairs for BAE Systems, a U.K.-based company whose Defense Department contracts won them billions last year alone.

Bergin comes from the office of Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), where he was senior counsel. The retired Marine Corps major has also worked for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and for Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio).

Many staffers work for Congress in the hopes of climbing the ranks in Washington or move to lucrative lobbying gigs. But for others, working for a member of Congress is a stepping stone to a career working for their home-state legislatures.

At least two percent of state legislative staffers across four states have prior experience working for members of Congress (124 out of 5,941 staffers), according to LegiStorm data, which now tracks state-level staff. The data currently covers staff of legislators, committees and leadership offices working for the California, New York, Pennsylvania and Michigan legislatures, with the remaining states to be added over the next few months.

Many who have made the move held lower-level positions with Congress and have since moved in to positions of power in state legislatures. The most common job title for a congressional-field-representative-turned-state-staffer is chief of staff.

It is no surprise that Rep. Jackie Speier's (D-Calif.) newest legislative assistant will be covering civil rights for the office.

Attorney Rachel Marshall, who joined Speier's staff this month, comes to the representative's staff after years of lobbying on juvenile justice issues. Most recently, she was the federal policy counsel for Campaign for Youth Justice. Before that, Marshall worked at the American Civil Liberties Union.

"There's just no way to overstate her leadership role on federal juvenile justice legislation," Josh Rovner of The Sentencing Project wrote about Marshall on Twitter. "She'll be missed, but the House will be better off with her on the inside."

Marshall will also cover the financial sector and commerce for Speier, among other issues.