Sonya Jaquez Lewis

Sonya Jaquez Lewis is an American politician who is the member of the Colorado House of Representatives from the 12th district in Boulder County. Lewis is the first Latina and the first LGBTQ person ever elected to the Colorado General Assembly from Boulder County, Colorado.

Sonya Jaquez Lewis
Member of the Colorado House of Representatives
from the 12th district
Assumed office
January 4, 2019
Preceded byMike Foote
Personal details
Political partyDemocratic

Jaquez Lewis is currently running for the open 17th district of the Colorado Senate in 2020.

Early life

Jaquez Lewis is part of the “Hispano”, Hispanic families from the San Luis Valley in Southern Colorado whose roots in the state go back hundreds of years.[1]

Personal life

Jaquez Lewis was born in Charlotte, North Carolina but spent every summer in and has lived in Colorado for over 21 years. She is the oldest of five children of Georgia Jaquez Lewis and Robert Lewis. Jaquez Lewis is a licensed Pharmacist and former first Pharmacy Director of Colorado Medicaid, Colorado Access. She served for seven years on the Boulder County Board of Health. She is an Educator, serving as an Adjunct Professor at the Colorado School of Pharmacy and Guest Lecturer at the Denver school of Nursing.

Jaquez Lewis has been very involved in LGBTQ sports and Equality. As past President of Team Colorado, one of the first LGBTQ Sports organizations in the country and served on the board for the International Gay Games.

In 2014, Jaquez Lewis and Allison Lotspeich, her spouse, won the Gold medal for women's doubles tennis at the International Gay Games 9 in Cleveland, Ohio, and in 2018 she won the gold medal in the women's heptathlon in Paris. Because of her activism and athleticism, Jaquez Lewis is the First National Female Lesbian Athlete of the Year Award winner in 2016, as named by Compete Magazine.

In North Carolina she founded the Durham County Women's Commission 6 and the NC LGBTQ Pride Marching Band. She served on the statewide Board of Directors of NC Pride Festival and was one of the national Co-Hosts for NGLTF's Creating Change conference in Durham in 1993. The

first CC conference located in the South.

Jaquez Lewis riding her horse in Boulder County.

Political career

In 2008, Jaquez Lewis was elected statewide as the first out lesbian national delegate from Colorado to the Democratic National Convention. She has been a three-time national delegate to the Democratic National Convention from Colorado. She is currently the Vice Chair of the Colorado State House State, Veteran, and Military Affairs committee, member of the Health and Insurance committee, and Legislative Interim Committee on Energy.

Lewis was elected in the general election on November 6, 2018, winning 74 percent of the vote over 26 percent of Independent candidate.[2]

Jaquez Lewis was interviewed by Shaun Boyd on Channel 4 news about HB 1296 that would help Coloradans save money. he is the winner of the 2019 Henry Toll Fellowship Program as part of the Council of State Governments (CSG).

Her legislative work can be found at the Colorado General Assembly website.

gollark: I doubt it's particularly secret if random TSA people know about it, but enjoy.
gollark: Stuff like the proof of Fermat's last theorem required connecting together a bunch of disconnected-looking areas of maths in very clever ways. There's more to that than just "practice", by most definitions of practice.
gollark: If you want to solve "the most difficult solvable equation in the world" you're probably going to have to come up with a lot of new techniques.
gollark: Practising stuff will make you better at what you're already able to do mostly.
gollark: No you won't.

References
  1. mainadmin. "ABOUT ME". Sonya For Colorado. Retrieved February 21, 2019.
  2. "Colorado Election Results - Election Results 2018 - The New York Times". nytimes.com. Retrieved November 24, 2018.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.