Profile of Erik Sahlin

Erik Sahlin has spent much of the past decade working against the extreme abuses of power caused by extreme imbalances of money.

Drawing on those years of independent and professional work, Sahlin created the Big Woods Declaration (BWD), a “declaration of independence from billionaires.” He released the BWD nationwide on January 16, 2026, both in print and online. In the BWD, Sahlin identifies what he calls “the core threat of our time”: the corruption of American institutions by individuals armed with extreme amounts of money. Sahlin lays out a plan to put a stop to this abuse of power by billionaires and keep the promise of the American Dream alive.

Since early 2025, Sahlin has been helping to raise the alarm about the wave of AI-scale data centers being pushed on Minnesota by billionaires and their middlemen. He has joined organizing efforts across Minnesota and designed materials to inform the public about the problems of AI data centers.

Four months after releasing the Big Woods Declaration, Sahlin turned the vision of the BWD into the foundation of his “Pro-America Anti-Billionaire” U.S. Senate campaign.

Erik Sahlin became a candidate for public office in 2024 when a pit mining operation threatened the Big Woods corridor in Rice County, Minnesota. The county government failed to respond to the concerns of community members, and in response, Sahlin stepped up and ran for county commissioner. While that campaign was ultimately unsuccessful, it proved to be critical preparation for his current U.S. Senate campaign.

Sahlin developed his commitment to public service at an early age. While still in high school, his participation in the Minnesota YMCA Youth in Government program was an education in servant leadership. This led to several years of close mentorship by a state legislator and experience serving as an aide in the Minnesota House of Representatives.

In college at Georgetown University, Sahlin trained for a potential career in the U.S. Foreign Service. When he continued on to graduate school at Stanford University, he decided instead to pursue a career as an educator. For over a decade, Sahlin advanced through graduate programs in history and politics, while teaching classes for college students on topics ranging from U.S. history to Chinese politics to “The American Dream.”

In the early 2000s, Sahlin was inspired by national events to make a different kind of contribution to public life. Starting in 2005, he went to work in public benefit organizations dedicated to strengthening public conversations about national issues. Working first as the Managing Director, handling operations and strategic planning, Sahlin also acquired skills in the sciences of language and cognition and became a communication specialist.

As a communication specialist, Erik Sahlin has helped lead pioneering efforts to apply the tools of cognitive linguistics to controversial and complex issues. In our time of division and overwhelm, he has focused his professional work on clear, upfront communication, refusing to let important issues be “too complicated to explain” to the American public.

In partnerships with national nonprofit organizations, Sahlin has helped improve public communication about the environment, civil rights, education, and healthcare. In one case, he helped identify ways to speak plainly about marriage equality without triggering hostility and backlash. In another case, his work helped a national healthcare initiative turn highly technical terminology into clear and straightforward language.

This professional experience is a foundation of Sahlin’s Big Woods Declaration, which puts our national crisis of out-of-control billionaire power into clear and frank terms. He provides a new set of language and concepts to launch a new national conversation.

Erik Sahlin’s international experience began in his teens. While still in high school, he served as a youth ambassador to Japan, Sweden, and the Soviet Union. His Soviet Union experience took him to the Ukraine just two years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, as well as to the cities of Minsk, Moscow, and Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg). There he engaged in dialogue with his Soviet counterparts on serious issues including the Berlin Wall, political prisoners, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Sahlin went on to study diplomacy at Georgetown University, where he did work on international economics, politics, and conflicts and cultures around the world.

After the 1989 political upheaval in China drew international attention, Sahlin decided to concentrate his studies on the rapid changes happening in Asia. He lived for a year in China as it began its modern economic transformation, and for two years in Taiwan as it began its modern democratic transformation. While living abroad and through his graduate work, Sahlin gained a deep knowledge of Chinese language, history, politics, and culture. When China emerged as a technological power, he became an expert on its efforts to replicate the success of America’s Silicon Valley.

In his current career as a communication specialist, Sahlin has remained active on international issues, working to protect American aid programs as well as to advance international social and environmental standards.

Erik Sahlin was born on November 13, 1970, in St. Louis, Missouri. At the age of 5, his family moved to Rice County, Minnesota, where he was raised on a farmstead along the Big Woods corridor. He attended public schools in Nerstrand and Faribault and is a 1989 graduate of Faribault Senior High School.

Sahlin is a 1993 graduate of Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. After Georgetown, he worked through a series of graduate programs at National Chengchi University in Taiwan, Stanford University, and the University of California at Berkeley. He went on to serve as Managing Director of two nonprofit organizations, the Rockridge Institute and Real Reason. In 2016, he co-founded the language and linguistics strategy firm Real Language LLC.

In 2024, Sahlin was a candidate for county commissioner of District One of Rice County, Minnesota. On January 16, 2026, he released the Big Woods Declaration nationwide, as a First Amendment petition to the American people and our government. In April of that same year he started the “Pro-America Anti-Billionaire” campaign for the expected 2027 special election for U.S. Senate in Minnesota.

Today, Erik Sahlin lives with his partner Alyssa Wulf and his two teenagers in Northfield, Minnesota.

Sahlin’s mother, Kay Laurine Sahlin (née Bjornstad), grew up in small towns across Minnesota where her father worked as an educator, including Motley, Belview, Storden, and Hanska. She studied music at St. Olaf College and went on to become a professional flutist, teaching in the St. Olaf Music Department and performing in the Rochester Symphony Orchestra, the Minneapolis Pops Orchestra, the WindWorks woodwind quintet, and subbing with the Minnesota Orchestra.

Sahlin’s father, Kenneth Carl Sahlin, grew up in Forest Lake, Minnesota, and then studied geography at the University of Minnesota. He worked as a cartographer for the U.S. Department of Defense in St. Louis, Missouri. Returning to Minnesota, he started Salco Toys, Inc. and manufactured wooden toys he specially designed for children with developmental disabilities. Then in 2000 he became the controller for a homebuilder and general contractor in Nerstrand, Minnesota.