Elliott covers Islam in America as a metropolitan reporter for The New York Times. She created the beat in 2005, focusing on the impact of 9/11 on American Muslims.
Elliott joined the Times in May 2003. She started as a general assignment reporter on the metropolitan desk and later covered the Bronx. Her stories have included an investigation of the private policing system at Macy's department stores, coverage of the bereaved children of 9/11 and reporting from Washington and overseas on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
From 2000 to 2003, Elliott was a reporter at The Miami Herald, where she covered crime, natural disasters, immigration trends, Latin American politics and the recount of the 2000 presidential election.
Elliott earned a bachelor's degree in comparative literature from Occidental College in 1996. She earned a master's from the Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in 1999, graduating first in her class and winning a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship.
While in college, Elliott began working in documentary film, traveling across South America in 1995 to produce natural history programs for Chilean television. From 1997 to 1998, she co-directed, wrote and produced a feature-length documentary, "It's All Good," exploring the subculture of in-line skaters in Los Angeles and New York.
Her journalistic honors include awards from the New York Press Association, the Newswomen's Club of New York and the Society of the Silurians.
Elliott was born in 1972 in Washington, D.C., to a Chilean mother and American father. She is fluent in Spanish, proficient in Portuguese and is learning Arabic. She is married and lives in Manhattan.