My Story
“I have worked hard. But I know that working hard is not enough — and that the gap between effort and security is a policy choice, not a personal failing.”
I came to politics late, but I was raised to be a Democrat.
I grew up in St. Louis in a family that knew something about getting by. Hand-me-down clothes, two pairs of shoes — one for school, one for church — and bread bags over our feet in the snow. Weekends on public tennis courts and in state parks, because why pay for what was free? My dad served in Germany, then worked his way up from assistant manager at JC Penney to earn a brokerage license. My mom was a teacher, by training and by nature — and a patient, by circumstance, for much of my childhood. By the time I was a sophomore in high school, she had survived the loss of a kidney, an ovarian surgery, a virus that attacked her central nervous system, and a treatment that left her blind before she regained partial vision. My sister and I were her caregivers through all of it. We lived, I think, for years in a fog of depression.
Books were my escape. So was a small Episcopal church where I served as a lay reader and chalice bearer, sang in the choir and taught Sunday school. College was my way out — I went where the scholarships were, worked a variety of service and retail jobs, and eventually found my way to graduate school in Syracuse, where I met my husband, Stephen. We married in 1993 and eventually made our way to Chevy Chase, where we've lived for 17 years and raised three children.
I spent many of those years doing what a lot of women do: working, caregiving, volunteering, trying to make change around the edges. After COVID, after my mother passed, I decided that wasn't enough. I joined Montgomery County's Commission on Aging, the Women's Democratic Club, and Maryland Emerge. I worked with District 20 State Delegate Lorig Charkoudian and Lieutenant Governor Aruna Miller. I learned how policy gets made — and unmade.
What I learned is that even in one of the most affluent counties in the country, most families are one health crisis or a couple of missed paychecks from a financial crisis. We have felt the ripples from DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) and federal disinvestment. Too many families live on the edge of precarity — not because of bad luck, but because of policy choices made by the people we elected to protect us.
This year, when we needed our representatives to meet the moment, too many have not. Some support a second year of cuts to the DDA (Developmental Disabilities Administration). Some are willing to let Unemployment Insurance modernization and worker free speech protections quietly die. Others just haven't fought hard enough.
I know what it is to caregive. To be laid off. To stretch a dollar. To be one bad diagnosis away from a different life. Good policy starts with lived experience. I'm running because I'm ready to bring mine to Annapolis — and to fight for the choices that will actually make a difference.
It’s time for different choices. It’s time for different people.
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I know what it means to take a job that barely covers childcare. To stay silent when something is wrong at work because you cannot afford to lose healthcare. To stretch what you have because the money simply has to last.
I’ve been laid off while pregnant, then eight years later, again, this time postpartum — the financial crisis compounded by an identity crisis as I lost my rhythm and purpose.
I know that staying home to raise children is also work — exhausting, joyful, and almost entirely invisible to the community and economy it sustains.
Today, our community is full of people quietly carrying incredible weight and struggling to sustain families. Federal workers whose housing is suddenly in jeopardy. Immigrant families who built something real and deserve a government that protects it. Households where two incomes still don't cover childcare. Long-time renters unable to retire. Retired homeowners skipping meals to stay solvent.
As we address the issues facing our community, we can shape a decent society in which we all have access to the basics— care, housing, health, education, and work with dignity.
Our schools should be good enough for every child who walks through the door — not just the ones whose families have the time and resources to fill the gaps. Caregivers should be supported. Public employees should be able to live in our communities. These are not radical beliefs. It is a basic promise this community has always believed in.
Policy written from the outside looking in almost always misses what matters most. My ordinary experiences and my own struggles as an employee, a parent, a daughter, a neighbor, a friend, a commissioner, a volunteer are the foundation of my platform.
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I am running because care work is real work. I am running because renters are neighbors, workers deserve dignity, and children deserve to start life on solid ground.
I am running because I believe that the issues we face as a community are the result of policy and legislative decisions made in Annapolis. I have spent enough time in Annapolis to learn that the lived experience of the people who make the laws matters enormously.
I have lived enough of an ordinary life to know that working hard is not enough. The gap between hard work and security is not a personal failing. It’s a policy choice. And it’s time to choose differently.
Dignity. Fairness. Family. Community.
