Accomplishments

Advancing healthcare for all

  • Champion of Hennepin County Medical Center and its clinics – this incredible institution that in many ways serves our entire state, must remain a vibrant part of Minnesota’s healthcare ecosystem

  • Authored the creation of the Birth Justice Collaborative (together with Commissioners Fernando and Conley), with significant investment in child and maternal health – this is one of many steps needed to reverse disparities in outcomes for Black and Indigenous babies and moms

  • Former board chair and current board member for Hennepin Health — the county’s innovative ACO. Successfully championed  this hotbed of innovation in healthcare delivery

Serving families and youth, with innovative services and housing

  • Drive innovation across the housing spectrum to build successful new models of supportive housing, e.g., the former Metro Inn’s conversion to deeply affordable single-room-occupancy housing

  • Support a distinct wing at the county Behavioral Health Center to serve youth entering into our Juvenile Detention Center with higher needs for mental health services

  • Use opioid settlement funds to partner with community agencies to provide targeted treatment, healing and outreach

  • Hennepin County effectively ended homelessness for our Veterans, via effective and innovative deployment of services!  This success is informing our work to end homelessness for other targeted populations, eventually ending eventually ending homelessness for all

Investing in transit, and community and economic connectivity

  • Led the county’s partnership with legislators and advocates to achieve dedicated sustainable transit funding for the metro region

  • Represent the county in presentations with the Federal Transit Administration, negotiations with the Metropolitan Council, and advocacy and testimony at the legislature

  • Advocate and partner to strengthen multi-modal regional transit

  • Champion the retention and refurbishment of bridges across the Greenway to keep the City of Minneapolis connected

  • Served on the Metropolitan Governance Taskforce, established by the Minnesota Legislature to address ongoing concerns regarding the Council’s transparency and accountability

  • Chair, Hennepin County Regional Railroad Authority

Projects like these are investments intended to last decades. Community voices are paramount as we modernize our roads and bridges.

Projects in District 3: 

  • Lyndale Avenue 4-to-3 conversion pilot, pedestrian safety improvements at 25th and 27th – complete

  • Minnetonka Boulevard between Lake Street and Highway 100 - newly complete

  • Franklin Avenue between Lyndale and Chicago Avenues - construction started this year

  • Lyndale Avenue between Lake Street and Franklin Avenue - refining design

  • Minnetonka Boulevard between Highway 100 and Aquila Avenue - Phase 3 of community engagement

Supporting immigrant community members

  • Led creation of Hennepin County’s Immigrant Legal Defense Fund (ILDF) so residents facing deportation have access to due process

  • Championed ILDF when its future was not guaranteed

  • Brought additional immigrant legal services in-house at the county to remove barriers to employment and housing

  • Consistent champion for the Offices of Multicultural Services and Community Engagement

  • At the National Association of Counties (NACo), serve as Vice Chair of the Immigration Reform Taskforce

Championing a sustainable and resilient county in the face of climate change

  • Support ethical closure of the HERC 

  • Led the authorship and unanimous passage of the county’s Climate Action Plan, which is now being implemented, and advanced via the county’s Zero Waste Plan

  • Championed passage of the Paper and Packaging Reduction Act (extended producer responsibility) in the Minnesota Legislature (passed in 2024)

Laser focus on disparity reduction and antiracism

  • Authored the creation of the county's first Reparative Justice Research Task Force (together with Commissioner Conley) 

  • Champion of county’s community engagement, to ensure that the county builds its skills at listening, to partner with community on addressing community needs.

  • County engagement work emphasizes the voices of populations historically marginalized by the system – by race, by culture, by age, and LGTBQIA+

  • Over the last decade, Hennepin County has recognized and intentionally woven disparity reduction through all categories of county work: human services, public works, healthcare, safety and justice, and workforce and economic development.

Advancing community and public safety

  • Committed champion of and participant in interjurisdictional and multidisciplinary collaboration in support of regional and neighborhood goals (e.g., Hennepin County Sheriff's Office partnerships with local police, Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee, and recent work in Uptown and Lyn-Lake in Minneapolis)

  • Supporter of victims services that are culturally responsive and trauma informed