Lisa Blunt Rochester

Lisa Blunt Rochester has served as the U.S. representative for Delaware's at-large congressional district since 2017. She is the first woman and first African American to represent Delaware in Congress. During her swearing-in, she carried a scarf imprinted with the Reconstruction Era voter registration card of her great-great-great-grandfather, who had been a slave.

Blunt Rochester was born on February 10, 1962 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Wilmington, Delaware. She received her bachelor's degree in international relations from Fairleigh Dickinson University and her master's degree in urban affairs and public policy from the University of Delaware.

After interning for U.S. Rep. Tom Carper in 1989, Blunt Rochester worked for him as a constituent relations caseworker and on his transition team when he was elected governor of Delaware. Carper appointed her deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Social Services in 1993 and secretary of the Department of Labor in 1998. In 2001, Governor Ruth Ann Minner named Blunt Rochester the state personnel director. In 2004, she left public service to become CEO of the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League. She also later served as the senior executive leadership and systems manager for the Institute for Community Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

During Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, Blunt Rochester served as one of the campaign co-chairs and as a member of the vetting committee for the vice presidential candidate selection.

For information on Blunt Rochester's policy subject areas, committee appointments and sponsored/co-sponsored legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives, please visit her profile on https://www.congress.gov.

Sources:

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. (n.d.). Blunt Rochester, Lisa. Retrieved on Dec. 21, 2022, from https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/B001303.

U.S. Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester. (n.d.) Biography. Retrieved on Dec. 21, 2022, from https://bluntrochester.house.gov/biography.

Ballotpedia. (n.d.). Lisa Blunt Rochester. Retrieved on Dec. 21, 2022, from https://ballotpedia.org/Lisa_Blunt_Rochester.