By most metrics, our district is ‘fully developed” with much of the region crafted and built 50 years ago.  Yet, we find ourselves at a new crossroads as we reimagine some significant properties and a new generation of families seeks to make this their new home.  Major redevelopment is afoot in the heart of our region - from the Metcalf Middle School site to the future of the Sioux Trail Elementary property.  Meanwhile, Eagan anchors regional commerce with Central Park Commons and the surrounding business corridors.

Our district also protects irreplaceable public assets like Blackhawk Park and the Minnesota River Valley, which are central to our quality of life.  We’re growing, we’re changing, and people are choosing to build their lives here.  But if we want that growth to actually serve families - not corporate consolidators - we need to push for policies that keep housing attainable, strengthen our small local entrepreneurs, and stop predatory business models from hollowing out the places that make our region thrive.

Thoughtful, People-Centered Development

When it comes to development, I believe that growth should be thoughtful, human-centered, and designed to strengthen and enhance the region for the people who already call our communities home.  I’ve seen firsthand how redevelopment decisions can either strengthen a neighborhood’s identity or fracture it.  We should be adding housing that people can actually afford, designing walkable and safe streets, preserving green spaces, and ensuring that new projects serve families, workers, and small businesses…not just investors scouting their next extraction opportunity.  I support building tools that require real community engagement, protect renters and homeowners from displacement, and demand transparency when large landholders and corporate developers enter the picture.  Done well, development can meet housing needs, honor existing neighborhood cultures and assets, elevate minority and underserved voices in planning, and help local families put down deeper roots.  That’s the kind of growth I’ll fight for.

A Place Where Local Entrepreneurs Can Thrive

Our communities thrive when the people who live here have the chance to build here.  That means making it easier for women entrepreneurs, immigrant-owned businesses, home grown innovators, and BIPOC founders to launch and scale their ideas.  Across the country, women own about one-third of small businesses, but startups founded solely by women receive only around 2% of all venture capital dollars, and Black and Latino founders together still capture just a sliver of overall VC funding.  That gap isn’t about talent…it’s about systems.  We should do more to close this gap and help businesses like these thrive.  We need to be setting real supplier-diversity expectations for public procurement, offering micro-grants and culturally competent technical assistance, and - most importantly - expanding access to revenue-based financing so strong business ideas aren’t derailed by predatory debt or private-equity buyouts.  When we invest in our own neighbors, we build wealth locally, keep dollars circulating in the district, and open the door to generational economic mobility.  That’s the kind of entrepreneurship ecosystem that Minnesota should be known for.

Reining In Private Equity - Transparency, Oversight & Community Protections

As a business owner, I’ve watched too many industries get hollowed out by private equity roll-ups that put profits first and communities dead last.  Whether it’s nursing homes, rental housing, dental practices, or essential local employers…once distant investors start buying up everything in sight, we see the same pattern: less competition, higher prices, thinner staffing, and service quality falling off a cliff.  Our community is robust with major health systems, senior facilities, strategic business corridors, and thousands of locally owned and operated businesses.  We need clear guardrails that protect people, not just portfolios.  That means real ownership transparency for corporate roll-ups, stronger protections for workers and tenants during closures or asset sales, Attorney General oversight on anti-competitive consolidations, and tighter rules in sensitive sectors so no one can quietly extract value while leaving families, patients, customers, or employees holding the bag.  Market growth is great.  But stripping our local assets at the cost of the community is not.  As someone who works at the financial heart of dozens of small and mid-sized businesses, I’ve seen the impact of consolidation up close.  I know exactly what it looks like when decisions stop being made in Minnesota and become driven only from hedge fund boardrooms.  I’ll fight for a fair marketplace where businesses grow because they serve our community well…not because investors found a loophole to squeeze every drop of value out of them.

A Future Built for People, Not Investors

At the end of the day, everything that I’m fighting for comes back to one simple value:  growth should make life better for the people who live here.  Whether we’re redeveloping school properties, setting the rules of the marketplace, helping neighbors start businesses, or guarding against corporate consolidation, Minnesotans deserve policy that builds stability, fairness, and shared prosperity.  We can welcome new investment and new families without sacrificing affordability, community identity, or the dignity of workers.  And if we do this with transparency, accountability, and a willingness to stand up to concentrated power…our district can continue to be a model for what smart, equitable growth looks like in Minnesota.