Sara Rodriguez
Sara Rodriguez (born July 25, 1975) is an American registered nurse, health care executive, and politician. A Democrat, she is the representative of the 13th district of the Wisconsin State Assembly—comprising eastern Brookfield, the village of Elm Grove, and western Wauwatosa. She won election to her first term in November 2020. She is a candidate for lieutenant governor in the 2022 Wisconsin gubernatorial election. Early life and education. Rodriguez was born and raised in the Milwaukee metropolitan area in southeast Wisconsin. She graduated from Brookfield East High School and earned her B.A. in neuroscience from Illinois Wesleyan  University. Immediately after college, she volunteered with the Peace Corps and was sent to Samoa, where she remained for two years. During that time she also volunteered with the World Health Organization. After returning to the United States, she went on to continue her education at Johns Hopkins University, where she earned a bachelor's degree and master's degree in nursing. Healthcare career. She worked for two years as a registered nurse in the emergency department at the Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, then went to work for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in their Epidemic Intelligence  Service from 2004 to 2006. In 2006 she moved to Colorado and worked as associate director of nursing at the Tri-County Health Department, serving Adams, Arapahoe, and Douglas Counties. In 2009 she was appointed Chronic Disease Branch Director in the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, under Governor Bill Ritter. In 2011, she returned to Wisconsin and was employed as Vice President of Clinical and Analytical Services at The Benefit Services Group, Inc., until 2014. She then worked three years as Vice President of Clinical Services at Honeywell Life Care Solutions. From 2017 until her campaign for the  Assembly in 2020, she was vice president for Population Health and Integrated Care Management at Advocate Aurora Health. Political career. In 2020, Rodriguez declared that she would be a candidate for Wisconsin State Assembly in the 13th assembly district, challenging incumbent Republican Rob Hutton. Hutton was first elected after the Republican redistricting in 2012, which made the 13th district significantly more Republican—Hutton carried the district with 60% of the vote in 2012 and was unopposed in 2014 and 2016. Despite the redistricting plan, the 13th district had moved back toward Democrats—like several other suburban districts—over the course  of the Trump presidency. Hutton was in his fourth term in 2020 and had narrowly won re-election in 2018 with a margin of just 955 votes. Rodriguez said she was inspired to run by Republican inaction around the 2020 spring election, which occurred during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wisconsin. She stated that, "when the Republican-led Legislature made people choose between their health and right to vote in the spring election, I just felt my background in health care and epidemiology would be helpful." Rodriguez prevailed in the November general election, winning the seat by  735 votes. She was one of only two candidates in Wisconsin to defeat an incumbent in the 2020 general election. Personal life and family. Rodriguez is married with two children and resides in Brookfield, Wisconsin.