I try to teach my children that if you’re unhappy with the way something is, you should take action to make a difference. Bloomington is a wonderful place to live, and I’ve cherished it for decades. Growing up in Pontiac, I often visited Bloomington to dine out, watch movies, stroll through the mall, or play putt-putt golf. Over the years, however, I’ve seen some of the city’s charm begin to fade.
This inspired me to explore ways I could contribute to restoring and enhancing the community’s vibrancy. My journey led me to the decision to run for City Council. Serving in this role offers the best opportunity to bring thoughtful, balanced leadership to the city I’ve proudly called home for the past 28 years.
I believe in continuing to invest in spaces that engage and inspire our community. Achieving this requires input from everyone to refine and create the spaces our community desires—whether it’s adding walking trails, dog parks, movie nights, an amphitheater, or reimagining places like Eastland Mall or downtown. Inclusive input is vital for progress. With my experience in leadership, vendor management, and relationship building, I am uniquely positioned to unite people and work collaboratively toward a shared solution.
Very unimportant
Somewhat unimportant
Neither important nor unimportant
Somewhat important
Very important
Infrastructure is the backbone of our city—water, sewer, internet, electricity, fiber optics, and roads. No thriving city has a weak foundation. While housing, downtown redevelopment, and Eastland Mall’s future are important, they all depend on strong infrastructure and public safety.
The City Council must prioritize and execute projects effectively while maintaining fiscal responsibility. This year, nearly $100 million of our $330 million budget is for infrastructure. With the budget nearly doubling since 2015, we must make prudent decisions to ensure sustainable growth and responsible spending.
Transparency and honesty are essential. In the coming years, we will face many difficult decisions. It is crucial to keep the public informed through open forums and clear communication about what is happening and why. We must also share the thought process behind our decisions. Not everyone will agree, and that’s okay—but we need to demonstrate that our choices are guided by both a near- and long-term vision for building a thriving Bloomington. The path forward may not be easy, but it is necessary.
Before joining State Farm, I spent a decade in retail, where I focused on recruiting, hiring, training, and retaining talent. I worked closely with department heads to identify gaps and surpluses in staffing. From my experience and what I’ve observed, the challenge isn’t finding and hiring talented individuals. However, if that were the case, I would take a proactive approach—assessing the necessary skills for the role, identifying what’s missing in candidate pools, and collaborating to find effective solutions.
Campaign Phone
3095316071
The bottom line is that I love this city. Bloomington has been a wonderful place to work and raise my family. But the things that have made Bloomington successful in the past 100 years are not the same ones that will make us successful in the future.
I am running because we need pro-active leadership to dig into the issues, reach out to stakeholders and face our challenges head on.
With my bachelor's degree in economics, master's degree in statistics and over 15 years of experience using data to make targeted decisions, I am ready to step up.
We need to focus efforts to make Bloomington a place where businesses can take root. That can be done with a list of standard incentives that include specific fee waivers, or fee waivers for local owners of new rental properties, or short term tax abatements for particular developments or business locations. But we can't stop there. It takes effort for companies and developers to weed through local regulation and laws. We must work to create a simple, understandable, clear, single marketing one-pagers that can be shared by representatives of our community to businesses to put Bloomington top of mind.
I fully support the Downtown for Everyone initiative and look forward to making sure that moves forward responsibly and sustainably.
Very unimportant
Somewhat unimportant
Neither important nor unimportant
Somewhat important
Very important
It is imperative that our city council supports sustainable growth, and that is 100% dependent on maintaining our infrastructure and emergency services. This means focusing on immediate needs AND routine maintenance.
Modernizing city services leads to In my capacity as a data scientist, I work with AI every day. I have an understanding of what it can do and what sort of assumptions must be tested in order to use it safely.
The city council can address a lack of trust with transparency and engagement.
I have learned from my conversations with Ward 9 voters, that they want to be involved. They want to hear from their local elected officials. I have knocked on 100s of doors to hear their voice.
Our citizens do not see our governmental bodies as separate entities. They rightly feel that our city council, our school systems, our county government, etc., are all parts of larger community leadership. And while each institution maintains its own responsibilities, we cannot work in silos. I am reaching out not only to City Council members for engagement but with our Unit 5 and District 87 school boards so that we can build coalition across the community.
There are a series of actions we can take on the city council to recruit and retain employees:
1. Encourage ingenuity: We have got to have a city that proactively maintains relationships with housing developers and diverse businesses for future growth. We on the city council can wholeheartedly encourage creative, yet safe, thinking and action so that we can tackle our new normal.
2. We can address our budget crunch and remain competitive with salary packages by continuing to encourage the work being done to develop more efficiencies within city processes.
3. Working to make sure our first responders are supported, including training initiatives, community engagement efforts and pension protection.
