Jennifer has spent nearly a dozen years doing what most in Congress can’t or won’t do: balance someone else’s checkbook. As an accountant, Jennifer has worked in both the private and public sector, working for three private-public partnerships, in organizations as small as nine employees to a thousands-strong, multi-national corporation. With her degree in Public Administration (a Business/Political Science hybrid), Jennifer has a real world, common sense understanding of how budgets and cash flow work. Jennifer understands that when there is no money in the bank, her employers can’t simply “tax” their way out of fiscal difficulties. Jennifer knows how to analyze present and future expenditures to determine where and how cuts can be made. On behalf of her past employers, Jennifer has negotiated for lower costs on products and services, and has even been known to use coupons to save on office supplies!
Jennifer was born and raised in Milwaukee, and has been a lifelong resident of the city’s Bay View neighborhood. Jennifer’s family roots are deep in the area, and Jennifer currently resides in the home her great-grandparents bought nearly three quarters of a century ago. While Jennifer has remained a lifelong, hometown gal, she has traveled throughout the U.S. and Europe, and even spent Christmas 2000 in Hong Kong with her sister, Rachel. Jennifer also attended college for a semester in her namesake city of London during her last year of school. In addition to parents and sister, Jennifer’s family includes two beagles and one (now deceased) pet duck!
Jennifer’s experiences and successes did not come easy to her; in fact, it was through her fiscally-challenged upbringing that shaped her worldview, in particular, her value of the dollar. Like many dads (and some moms too!) in the early 1980’s, Jennifer’s dad was laid off after ten years with a West Milwaukee factory when the Jimmy Carter-induced recession hit the U.S. With her mom as the sole breadwinner of a young family for nearly a year and a half (and another year of Dad working at a part-time, minimum wage job until the economy improved), Jennifer’s family lived for a time though some hard, make-or-break stretches of macaroni & cheese and peanut butter & jelly dinners. Jennifer understands the uncertainty Americans face today, and the desperate need for leadership and solutions in Congress, because Jennifer lived it.
The realities of living for the next paycheck that was spent before it was cashed never left Jennifer. It instilled a sense that money is not disposable, nor is it easy to come by. Jennifer took her financial obligations so seriously that after an accident in 2006 that left Jennifer with months of physical therapy and thousands of dollars in medical bills, Jennifer decided to close all of her credit cards and payoff her car, and not trade it in for a new one. Jennifer showed financial prudence, which proved beneficial to her in the long run. While not life-threatening or career-altering, Jennifer’s medical obligations are on-going and expensive. But Jennifer knows that her first duty is to pay for her own health care, and not burden of her fellow Americans so that she might continue to have all of the accoutrements that living in our society might otherwise provide. And it is this mind-set that makes Jennifer a wise choice for the next Congresswoman of the 4th district of Wisconsin.
