Senator Laura Ellman Contact information

Laura Ellman is a Democratic member of the Illinois Senate for the 21st district. The district, located in the Chicago metropolitan area, includes parts of Bolingbrook, Downers Grove, Glen Ellyn, Lisle, Lombard, Naperville, Wheaton, and Warrenville.

Ellman was elected to serve in the Illinois General Assembly in November of 2018. She defeated incumbent Republican Senator Michael Connelly in the 2018 Illinois general election. As a senator, Ellman currently serves on a number of committees, including Agriculture; Appropriations, Chairperson of Environment and Conservation; Vice-Chairperson of Financial Institutions; Transportation and Veterans Affairs.

Ellman has a love for learning and solving problems. She was the first child to go to college in both her parents’ families. After graduating from Grinnell College with a degree in mathematics, she earned a masters’ degree in applied statistics at the University of Iowa.

Professionally, Ellman has more than 25 years of experience working in manufacturing and engineering and dealing with regulations and policies. She is an assessor at a National Laboratory and knows what it takes to solve complex problems.

In her community, Ellman has been active through her work on the Naperville Fair Housing Commission, Toastmasters, and as a volunteer with Habitat for Humanity, Feed My Starving Children, and as an ESL tutor.

Ellman currently lives in Naperville with her husband Pete, a musician and small business owner, and is proud of their two college students – Lizzie and Barrett. In addition to amateur woodworking and home improvement projects, Ellman enjoys sports—she’s been playing basketball every week for over twenty years, participates in triathlons, and ran a marathon.

One of Ellman’s first pieces of legislation for the 2020 spring session was a measure that repealed the Railroad Intoxicating Liquor Act of 1911, which prohibits drinking alcohol on trains, around train stations and gives conductors the ability to arrest violators and charge them with a Class C misdemeanor. This law hasn’t been enforced since the 1920s, during prohibition.

Unfortunately, shortly after the Senate wrapped up session in February 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic derailed Ellman and the rest of the Senate’s legislative priorities for the 2020 spring session. Though disappointed with the outcome of her second legislative session, Ellman knew her job was to serve the residents of the district she represents in a time of international crisis.

As spring began to draw to a close, Ellman, along with her fellow lawmakers returned to the Capitol in Springfield to pass the state’s FY 21 budget. Although Ellman remained proud of the work she and colleagues accomplished in a compressed amount of time. She understood that there was a lot of work that still needed to be done for the residents of Illinois. She and her staff continued their hard work to ensure residents in the 21st district had access to the information and resources they needed to help guide them through an uncertain time.