In 2003, a few days after our wedding, my partner Kate and I moved into our first apartment as a married couple on upper North Street in the East District of Burlington.  We quickly fell in love with the Queen City’s vibrant and diverse community and dreamed of someday raising a family together in Burlington.

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Now, twenty years later, we are so fortunate to live in the heart of Burlington, just a few steps away from that first apartment.  Our eldest son attends downtown BHS, our middle son is at Edmunds Middle School, and our youngest boy is in elementary school at IAA.  I practice law downtown and Kate is the principal of the Winooski Middle and High School.  If anything, we love Burlington even more now than we did twenty years ago.  We are so grateful for everything that this wonderful, engaged, and compassionate community has given our family.

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I grew up in Western Massachusetts. My mother was a teacher and later ran a non-profit that provided services for formerly incarcerated people suffering from mental health and addiction issues.  My father was a small-town accountant and, for many years, served as a selectperson.  From an early age my parents taught me the value of education and modeled for me a deep commitment to public service. 

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After graduating from the College of the Holy Cross, I followed in my mother’s footsteps in education and became a public middle school teacher through the Teach for America program in New York City.  After two years of teaching, I studied law at Yale Law School.  As an attorney in Vermont, I was a law clerk at the federal trial court in Burlington and then I clerked for the late Honorable Peter W. Hall on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.  It was during these two years that Kate and I fell in love with Vermont and resolved to make our home in Burlington.  In the years since, I served this community for a decade as an attorney with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Burlington and I am now in private practice at Downs Rachlin Martin PLLC.

 

As a Burlingtonian, I have worked to make public service a cornerstone of my career and life.  In addition to my work for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, I have served on the Boards of the Vermont Bar Association and the Vermont Bar Foundation.  For a number of years, I represented children in the court system as a volunteer with the Guardian ad Litem program.  Most recently, I have served on the Board of Center City Little League and, in the Spring and Summer, can often be found at Roosevelt Park working the grill at the Snack Shack.

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I am very proud to now be running for City Council with the nomination of the Burlington Democrats.  If elected, I pledge to always be accessible and responsive to my neighbors in the East District and to work with everyone—regardless of party affiliation—to find solutions to challenges our City is facing.