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A Hoosier hero: Robin Shackleford fights for the issues that matter

The state of Indiana has produced many female African-American leaders. Most of them are trailblazers in their fields who might not always get the credit they deserve. One such leader is a member of the Indiana General Assembly: Representative Robin Shackleford of House District 98.

Robin Shackleford was born in 1970 in Indianapolis. She received a BS in Public Affairs Management and a BA in Public Affairs from Indiana University in 1993. She went on to get a Master of Public Administration from Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) in 1999, a certificate in Economic Development from Ball State in 2000, and a certificate in Medicaid Health Policy from the Council of State Governments in 2013.

Before joining the Indiana General Assembly (and currently), Shackleford has held a number of jobs. She was a governmental assistant and lobbyist for Ice Miller, a policy and research specialist for the Indiana Health Care Association, a clerk for the Indiana State Supreme and Appellate Courts, the director of Diversity Affairs for Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson, a government consulting manager for Crowe Horwath, and is currently a project manager at Engaging Solutions Consulting Firm.

Shackleford won her race for the Indiana House of Representatives in 2012 and recently ran unopposed in the 2018 midterms. She is the chair of the Indiana Black Legislative Caucus, the ranking minority member of the Public Health Committee, and a member of the Financial Institutions and Government & Regulatory Reform Committees. Formerly, Shackelford served on the Commerce, Small Business, and Economic Development Committee and the Select Committee on Government Reduction.

Rep. Shackleford’s priorities at the statehouse are to focus on economic and community development issues, increasing voter turnout, helping ex-offenders gain employment, improving health education, and tackling gender pay disparity. Her motivation to become a legislator, she says, came from her desire to “serve the people that could not represent themselves or did not have the time to represent themselves”. She said she is “trying to make sure that my community and communities around Indiana are getting empowered and educated either through economic education or health wise”.

Representative Shackleford has said that her proudest accomplishment in the General Assembly is a law that she sponsored on telemedicine services, which passed with her party’s superminority in the House. Another current initiative of hers is to work on funding to eliminate food deserts in the Hoosier state.

Sources

https://www.womeningovernment.org/legislators/in-the-news/representative-robin-shackleford; https://ballotpedia.org/Robin_Shackleford; https://indianahousedemocrats.org/members/robin-shackleford/full; https://votesmart.org/candidate/biography/120367/robin-shackleford; http://www.governing.com/gov-institute/wig/robin-shackleford.html