Jenny Van Sickle 39

Great Lakes Fish & Wildlife Commission

What do you do professionally?

Superior City Councilor and Outreach for the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission

How are you involved in the community? Do you volunteer with any organizations?

I am a member of Lions International, a Team Leader with the Superior Days Organization, UWS Social Work Advisory, Redevelopment Authority, the Blatnik Project Advisory Council and I serve as a Chief Elections Inspector for local polling sites.

What is important to you?

I want my daughters to be courageous: I spend a lot of time thinking about my grandparents and my mom who have passed, I just want to make them proud.

Hard work: I’m passionate about being both proactive and thoroughly responsive to issues with comprehensive policy solutions.

Indigenous education, leadership, representation: I spent most of my childhood wrestling with what limited options I felt I had in life because of household dynamics. I want little Native kids to notice how much strength comes from their core and acknowledge their grit, no matter what circumstances they come from. This reflection is often what makes my attending and graduating college as special as it is to me — I thought I was counted out from an early age.

Transportation equity, voting access, and the ability for Native communities to live a largely subsistence lifestyle.

How do you spend your free time?

I love to snowshoe, bike, cook for my family, and downhill ski. I’ve also recently started beading earrings and caring for two Raven ZZ plants.

Favorite things about living and working in the Northland?

The magic of Wisconsin Point is staggering; the pure diversity of plant-life and trees,

From the nominators

surrounded by moody water is a place of healing and reflection for this born and raised Alaskan kid. The Northland has beautiful morning commutes (I regularly work across Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin), easily accessible woods, and Superior’s food scene is *chef’s kiss*

What advice would you give to up and coming professionals?

Wash the dishes. You don’t have to work your way to the “top” in every agency, group, or organization you join. Washing pans in a church basement, on a Friday night, has often been what makes me feel happiest and most helpful.

Favorite moment in life?

In my 30s I got to meet my biological, fullblooded Athabascan grandfather; he was living in a small apartment in Washington state after a long career as a barber in Seattle. Most recently, my husband and I spent our very delayed honeymoon in Romania’s Transylvanian countryside.

Attending culture camp in Yakutat, Alaska over the summers as a kid with my older sister created a special bond with our extended family, traditional food, and dancing.

Who has inspired you or your favorite motivational quote?

Xavier Bell was the most grounded and radical dreamer I’ve ever met.

“You can’t unknow what you know” is a quote of his I repeat a lot.

Anything else you want to add?

I ran for public office when I was 34; I’m a UWS college graduate who stayed, it does happen. Student retention in Superior is one of the most urgent issues facing our collective leadership; elected officials have to start measuring ourselves against diversified metrics of quality, community opportunities and 21st century expectations.