For 20 years, before becoming the Polk County Attorney, I was an advocate and attorney for abused or neglected kids and parents in juvenile court. Earlier in my career, I represented low-income people in our criminal courts. I also served as a mediator, mediation trainer, and collaborative lawyer. 

For 5 years, I helped families on their road to recovery, as an attorney in the Polk County Recovery Court program. In that role, I worked collaboratively on a team with a judge, assistant Polk County attorney, social workers from the Department of Human Services, therapists, substance abuse treatment providers, attorneys for parents, and the recovery court coordinator to provide representation and support for families as they learned to live in recovery and safely parent their kids.

As Polk County Attorney, I’ve been working with a team of dedicated public servants to create a safer, healthier, thriving community - and working to end racial and income disparities in our justice system.

A little about my background: My dad was one of 15 kids, born and raised in Des Moines. He was a Marine when I was born at Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base. My mom was a teenager when I was born, dropped out of high school and later earned her GED. My parents both worked union jobs and eventually retired from those jobs. I've been working since my parents divorced when I was 14. I worked in a dry cleaner, as a waitress, in retail stores, and as a union flight attendant for 12 years, where I helped organize our union to fight B scale wages.

I'm a first-generation college student, and worked continuously during college and law school. I know what it's like to decide which bills get paid now, which have to wait for the next paycheck, and what it’s like to pay for college and law school all on your own.

I served our community as a board member for ArtForce Iowa, a non-profit that creates opportunities for youth to transform through art. In 2019 I traveled to South Texas to help provide legal assistance to people seeking asylum. I provided legal services at no cost to folks for 22 years, as a volunteer with the Polk County Bar Association volunteer lawyer’s project.

I ran for Polk County Attorney so I could help create an equitable and effective justice system, help end racial and income disparities, invest in our kids because no kid is disposable, and use evidence-based policies to create a safer, healthy community. I said when I ran that we can do better. And we still can – there’s always more work to be done, a “more perfect union” to be had, and that includes our justice system.

A whole lot of people still have little to no faith in our justice system. When I ran for office in 2022, I said that we need to listen more and talk less. That’s still true. Even in these polarizing times, we can do more to create better results, reduce disparities and listen to and support victims.

Will we ever get to a justice system that is perfect? Will every single victim be happy with the results of the case? In a system that involves the complexity of human beings, one where we lack the funding to provide sufficient mental health and substance use disorder treatment, lack affordable housing, lack funding for public education, and lack a living wage for working folks, we’ll likely never get to perfection. But we will never stop trying.