Category: Iowa Women

Staci Appel
Staci Appel


Staci Appel served in the Iowa state Senate from 2007 to 2011. She was the 2014 Democratic nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives seat held by retiring Republican Senator Tom Latham, but lost to David Young in the general election. Appel was born April 19, 1966 in Waterloo, Iowa and grew up in Iowa City, Iowa. She is married to Iowa Supreme Court Justice Brent R. Appel. Appel worked as a financial consultant with Merrill Lynch and UBS Paine Webber. Appel was elected to the Iowa state Senate in […]
Cindy Axne
Cindy Axne


Cindy Axne served as the U.S. representative for Iowa's 3rd Congressional District from 2019-2023. Axne and Abby Finkenauer, who also won election to the U.S. House of Representatives on Nov. 6, 2018, are the first women to serve in the U.S. House from Iowa. Axne lost her re-election bid in the 2022 general election. Since 2023, she has served as a senior adviser to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Axne was born on April 20, 1965, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism from […]
Brenna Bird
Brenna Bird


Brenna Bird has served as Iowa’s attorney general since Jan. 3, 2023. Bird was born in 1976 in Iowa. She earned her bachelor's degree from Drake University and her Juris Doctor degree from the University of Chicago Law School. Before taking office as Iowa attorney general, Bird served as counsel to Gov. Terry Branstad, a prosecutor, and Guthrie County attorney (2018-2022). Des Moines Register. 2022. “Where Brenna Bird & Tom Miller stand on key issues in Iowa attorney general race.” Oct. 4. https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/elections/2022/10/04/meet-iowa-attorney-general-candidates-midterm-elections-2022-tom-miller-brenna-bird/10399243002 State of Iowa Office of the Attorney […]
Amelia Jenks Bloomer
Amelia Jenks Bloomer


Amelia Jenks Bloomer was a temperance activist, suffragist and editor. Bloomer was born on May 27, 1818, in Homer, New York. Though she received only few years of formal education, she worked briefly as a teacher in Homer and then, after to moving to live with her sister in Waterloo, New York, she worked for several years as a live-in governess for a family. She married David Bloomer of Seneca Falls in 1840. She became active in the Seneca Falls political and social community, joined the local women’s Temperance Society, […]
Christina Bohannan
Christina Bohannan


Christina Bohannan served a member of the Iowa House of Representatives representing the 85th District from 2021-2023. Bohannan was born on July 2, 1971, and grew up in Florida. She earned a degree in bachelor's degree in environmental engineering from the University of Florida and a J.D. from the University of Florida Fredric G. Levin College of Law. She began her professional career as an engineer with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. After moving to Iowa in 2000, she became a law professor at the University of Iowa College […]
Sue M. Wilson Brown
Sue M. Wilson Brown


Sue M. Wilson Brown was a clubwoman, civil rights activist and suffragist in Iowa. Brown was born on September 8, 1877, in Staunton, Virginia. She moved with her family to a coal mining camp near Buxton, Iowa, an integrated coal mining town in Mahaska County, and graduated from high school in Oskaloosa. She married S. Joe Brown, a lawyer in Buxton, in 1902 and they moved to Des Moines. Brown joined the Iowa Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, and from 1907 to 1909 she edited the Iowa Colored Woman, the […]
Bonnie J. Campbell
Bonnie J. Campbell


Bonnie J. Campbell is a former Iowa attorney general and a former official in the U.S. Department of Justice. Campbell was born on April 9, 1948, in Norwich, New York, and grew up in upstate New York. After graduating from high school, she moved to Washington, D.C, and worked as a clerk-stenographer for several politicians from 1965 to 1967, then as a clerk for the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations from 1967 to 1969. From 1969 to 1974, she was a caseworker in the office of U.S. Senator Harold […]
Carrie Chapman Catt
Carrie Chapman Catt


Carrie Lane Chapman Catt—an Iowa State University alumna who devoted most of her life to the expansion of women's rights around the world as well as international peace—is recognized as one of the key leaders of the American women's suffrage movement. Her superb oratory and organizational skills led to ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the right to vote in August 1920. Catt was born on January 9, 1859, in Ripon, Wis., the second of three children of Lucius and Maria (Clinton) Lane. In 1866, […]
Mary Jane Coggeshall
Mary Jane Coggeshall


Mary Jane Coggeshall (January 17, 1836 - December 22, 1911) of Des Moines, Iowa, was known as "the mother of woman suffrage in Iowa." Coggeshall was born in Indiana and moved to Des Moines in 1865 with her husband and children. In 1870, she was a charter member of both the Polk County Woman Suffrage Society and the Iowa Women Suffrage Association. She served as the IWSA president in 1890, 1891 and 1903-1905, and then as honorary president from 1905-1911. She also served as president of the Des Moines Equal […]
Deidre DeJear
Deidre DeJear


Deidre DeJear was the Democratic nominee for governor of Iowa in 2022, losing to incumbent Kim Reynolds in the general election. She is the founder of Vision Leads, a nonprofit organization fostering civic engagement. DeJear was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and moved to Oklahoma as a child. She attended Drake University and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism. In 2005 DeJear cofounded the nonprofit Back 2 School Iowa and in 2008 she started her business consulting firm, Caleo Enterprises. In 2019 she joined the board of the nonprofit […]