With experience ranging from teaching young women in apartheid South Africa to working with police on Chicago’s west side to help keep kids safe, Lisa Madigan is a recognized community leader, lawyer and educator.

As both an advocate and legislator, Madigan has worked to protect families, consumers and senior citizens. She believes the law should be used to improve people’s lives.

Madigan received her bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University in 1988. After graduation, she moved to Africa at the height of apartheid and served as a volunteer school teacher to young Zulu women in KwaZulu, South Africa, helping them overcome poverty, racism, violence and oppression through education.

Upon returning to Chicago, Madigan took a job with Wright College and began work on Chicago’s west side, partnering with police in the Austin Community to develop the Positive Alternatives Project, an after school and weekend program designed to keep kids away from drugs and gangs.

Madigan continued her work in community building at Wright College as an Assistant Dean for Adult and Continuing Education. In this position, she directed the Senior Academy for Lifelong Learning and Wright’s Family College.

Madigan’s work with police and families prompted her to attend Loyola University Law School. After graduating, she went to work as a litigator for the Chicago law firm of Sachnoff & Weaver, Ltd., where she specialized in employment law.

In 1998, voters in the 17th District on Chicago’s north side elected Madigan to the Illinois Senate. In the Senate, she served as the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Education Committee and was a member of the Governor’s Education Funding Advisory Board and the Governor’s Task Force on Universal Access to Preschool. In addition, Madigan served on the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules. She also co-chaired the Conference of Women Legislators.