The newest member of Mainstay’s Board of Directors is also its youngest. Twenty-nine-year-old Ellen C. Miller is an attorney working for the prestigious law firm Goodwin Procter in Boston. A cum laude graduate of Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts and the Boston University School of Law, she is equally as impressive (she was a Fulbright Scholar) as she is interesting (she is the proud owner of four rescue parakeets all named for song titles: “Talia”, “Valerie”, “Ophelia” and “Jolene”).
Miller is half Chinese and describes her other half as “extremely Midwestern.” She was born in Ohio to a mother who fled Beijing after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests; her parents met at the University of Cincinnati while her father was a PhD candidate.
“We moved to Connecticut when I was a little girl, and then to New Jersey when I was 10,” said Miller. “That’s where I mostly grew up, but our family definitely split time between the East Coast and Midwest.”
A gifted runner, Miller was part of the Division I track and field program at Rutgers where she competed in mid-distance events and ran cross country.
“I stayed in-state for college,” said Miller. “And this is basically what happened: My parents’ Ivy League aspirations for me suddenly and mysteriously evaporated when I told them I wanted to get a fine arts degree—and suddenly they were waaay less keen on having me attend an expensive liberal arts college.”
After graduating from Rutgers in 2017, Miller says she “stalled for a year” while figuring out her next steps.
“Let me paint you a picture,” she said. “Ellen graduates with a BFA in printmaking, a minor in Art History, and a strong desire to be able to pay her own bills. I’d been working part-time throughout college as an art teacher and really loved my students, but pretty quickly realized that the job was not going to give me the financial independence I wanted for myself. I applied for and was lucky enough to receive a Fulbright Scholarship, and off I went to teach in Taiwan.”
It was while teaching English to elementary school children in rural Taiwan that Miller decided to apply to law school.
“I think for me, there was a clear parallel between the law and what I grew up doing as the eldest child in a family of immigrants,” said Miller. “I was on the phone interpreting for my mom and grandparents regularly as a kid, explaining things back and forth at parent-teacher conferences, trying to translate documents way beyond my eight-year-old comprehension. Just like Mandarin, the law is a kind of foreign language for most people—a language of government, commerce, and ultimately, power—and through that lens, it all connected for me.”
Though her workdays are long as a member of Goodwin’s Real Estate practice group, Miller is involved with an astounding number of organizations geared towards helping members of the community. Since 2021 she has been a regular volunteer at Rice Sticks and Tea, an Asian food pantry in Boston. A member of the LGBTQ community, she and another attorney co-lead the Boston office’s PRIDE group at her firm and organize monthly coffee hours and other events aimed at building community. It is “one of the favorite parts of my job,” she said.
Miller is also a board member of the Asian American Law Association of Massachusetts, and sits on the Real Estate Committee of the Asian Community Development Corporation—an organization focused on developing and maintaining affordable housing in Chinatown and language access. “A lot of my work spans my identity as a queer Asian American woman,” said Miller. “My grandparents on my mom’s side never learned English but lived with us and raised me and my sisters for 20 years. Blending that part of my life with my real estate work—that’s what gets me up in the morning.”
Which brings us to how she found herself on the Mainstay Board of Directors. Miller attended last year’s You Make a Difference fundraiser, which was hosted at her law firm. “One of the partners at our firm was giving introductory remarks and emailed all the real estate attorneys to invite us,” said Miller. “So there I am, standing in the back of the room listening to parents talking about how Mainstay has been absolutely life-changing for their children, trying not to weep into my wine glass. It was so moving and the work Mainstay does is so clearly an intersection of some of my passions and areas of expertise—housing as a fundamental human right, and empowering members of communities that aren’t always afforded autonomy over their own lives. So, I went up and harassed Larry to see how I could get involved!”
She’s referring to Mainstay CEO Larry Oaks, who says inviting this enthusiastic and talented millennial to join the board was an easy decision.
“Sometimes the job of being the President at a small nonprofit is easy,” said Oaks. “When an obviously smart and talented attorney at a big law firm approaches you to say, ‘hey—your mission really speaks to me and I’d like to get involved as a volunteer’, all you have to do is say yes. We’re so fortunate to have Ellen on our board.”
Miller will help plan the next You Make a Difference fundraiser scheduled for this October 23, 2025 at Goodwin’s Boston office, located in the Seaport district. She is also determined to raise Mainstay’s profile and help add to its coffers. “Mainstay has been here doing this incredible work for 50 years, and the only reason I heard about them is because they happened to host an event at my firm. I’m hoping to help expand the organization’s reach—and on that note, we’re currently working on several really exciting new partnerships that I can’t wait for us to officially announce!”
Several years ago, Miller ran the Boston Marathon in support of Minds Matter Boston, a college access nonprofit, though she swears her marathoning days are now behind her. These days she enjoys group fitness classes and hosting “silly theme parties” for her friends—the most recent of which was a potluck-style soup party featuring over a dozen different varieties of soup. And, of course, there’s her volunteerism and advocacy.
“This is just how I’m wired,” said Miller. “A lot of people in my generation are feeling lonely and disconnected. I have found, routinely, that I make some of my most meaningful connections when doing mission-focused work with others. It’s all about doing something that matters—together.”
