Why I’m Running
I have spent my career helping organizations solve complicated problems, by bringing people together, understanding systems, managing tradeoffs, and moving from idea to implementation, together.
That experience shapes how I look at state government. Wisconsin families are facing real problems with school funding, child care, environmental health care, local services, and the cost of living.
We need leaders who can go beyond naming the problem; we need leaders who can get to the root cause and build practical solutions.
I am a progressive fighting for every Wisconsinite to be able to live their best life.
Sustainable School Funding
Our public schools are hubs and hearts of the community, where parents and students alike make new friends, learn new things, and expand their horizons. Our schools today are suffering for lack of funding, unable to keep up with inflation. In 2024 alone, school districts in Wisconsin put budget referendums on their local ballots a resounding 241 times!
Public schools are not adequately reimbursed by the state for providing students with disabilities the services they need. They are also restricted from managing themselves, through state revenue limits that overreach and starve them from accessing the funds needed to educate.
A robust public education system is not just a public good and a constitutional right, but it’s also an important investment in our economy. It is the key to a prosperous future for our youth, and our society. Properly-funded schools are the foundation for a lively community.
As your Assembly Representative, I plan to pursue:
Fully funding public preschool starting at age three with all-day four-year-old kindergarten in every public school.
Providing greater funding for schools with higher poverty rates and proportion of special needs students.
Replacing standardized testing with comprehensive evaluations that assess what is needed for schools and students to succeed.
Setting a goal of doubling the number of educators of color in all grades, and including a robust program to assist students of color in becoming educators.
Limiting charter schools to those authorized by elected public school boards, and phasing out voucher schools and non-instrumentality charter schools by 2034.
Requiring all voucher and charter schools to meet the same transparency, accountability, and teacher certification requirements as public schools. Requiring these schools to accept and fully accommodate all children, including special needs kids. Requiring the funds follow the student - when a student is removed from a voucher and charter, the money goes to the student’s new school on a prorated basis.
Healthcare is a Right
Today’s healthcare crisis is a moral failure that will haunt our society for generations to come if we do not make a substantial change. Women must be trusted to manage their own reproductive health care needs.
Workers must have access to timely, affordable healthcare, and to the treatments their medical providers recommend for their unique circumstances - not the treatments that for-profit insurance analysts deem appropriate.
My plan as your Assembly Representative includes:
Protecting women’s reproductive health freedom (such as the 2025 Assembly Bill 355).
Passing the BadgerCare Public Option Bill which doubles the BadgerCare eligibility level, and creates a public alternative to for-profit insurance for individuals and all small employers.
Reversing the deregulation of Wisconsin hospital monopolies which has increased prices.
Cracking down on pharmaceutical price gouging and using all available state leverage to set a fair price for all prescription medications.
Shifting from an increasingly unaffordable sick care system to a public health model that improves population health and reduces the need for expensive medical interventions.
Prohibiting mental health providers from engaging in “conversion therapy“.
Environmental Protection
Wisconsin was once a climate leader in the Midwest, protecting our incredible natural resources. Today, meeting this need requires significant efforts to undo harms caused by human activity and actively respond to emerging environmental threats.
Prior generations shaped nature around human needs, and now we must codify into law protections that disrupt the dangerous path we are on and restore the balance between nature and organized society.
As your Assembly Representative, I will fight for:
Requiring the state government to report annually on Wisconsin’s progress in meeting greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals.
Creating dedicated state funding, and Regional Transit Authorities with their own funding authority, at the levels necessary to fund expansion of public transit.
Investing in farmers to use low-carbon farming practices, and tax big corporate agriculture operations that have a large negative carbon impact, including CAFOs, to fund climate and renewable energy projects.
Put a moratorium on data center projects until the state does comprehensive planning and establishes a strong regulatory framework.
Support Working Families
Parenting today is so hard that parents' mental health and well-being amount to an urgent public health issue, as noted by Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. While raising children has always been hard, today’s parents face unique challenges that evolved over the course of several decades. Between young children and aging parents, many workers are forced out of the paid workforce for want of high-quality, affordable caregivers.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The stress and its long-term effects, as well as the injuries from inadequate care, are avoidable. And, state-supported childcare has a tremendous return on investment, estimated as $4-7 for each $1 spent; it’s foolish not to do it. Wisconsin should reinstate the Child Care Counts program to ensure early childhood educators earn a living wage.
I plan to support the following as your Assembly Representative:
Fully funding universal high-quality childcare with certified early education professionals, run by local school districts and staffed with public employees.
Increase Wisconsin minimum wage to $20 per hour, automatically index it to inflation annually, and remove state preemption on local minimum wages which are higher than the state floor.
Restoring full union rights in the public and private sectors, going beyond the labor protections provided before Act 10 and Right to Work to guarantee every worker in Wisconsin has the opportunity to form and maintain a strong union.
Small Business Competitiveness
As the wife to a small business owner, coming from a corporate background, I have been floored at the gaps for small business employees. No job-protected medical leave, often no paid leave, few options for employer-sponsored health insurance, the list goes on.
Small businesses are engines of innovation and growth; but today’s environment makes it too risky for many savvy professionals to launch new ventures and bring their unique offerings to market.
Further, small businesses not deemed “too big to fail” lose out against their behemoth rivals - who spend millions on lobbyists, lawyers, and work-arounds to avoid all sorts of regulations and tariffs.
We need to level the playing field and make Wisconsin friendly to small businesses and their workers.
