Representative Josh Turek Contact information

Josh Turek is a member of the Iowa House of Representatives from the 20th district. He was born and raised in Council Bluffs in a working-class family and has lived in the city for most of his life. Raised in a “basketball family,” Josh and two of his siblings went on to play basketball professionally.

Josh was born with spina bifida and has been a wheelchair user and an advocate of adaptive sports for the disability community since childhood. After graduating from Abraham Lincoln High School in Council Bluffs, Josh continued his basketball career at Southwest Minnesota State University where he was the most prolific scorer in the program’s history and earned a degree in History in 2002. He later earned an MBA from Keller University.

Josh has been inducted into the Athletic Hall of Fame at Abraham Lincoln and Southwest Minnesota State University. He proudly represented the United States at four Paralympics and is a three-time medalist (two golds and one bronze), most recently bringing home gold from the 2020 Tokyo Paralympic Games. He spent his basketball career playing professionally in Europe.

Josh has always strived to give back to the places that have given him so much. While playing professional basketball, Josh began as the Volunteer Director for the Ryan Martin Foundation, an organization providing children with disabilities opportunities to play sports for free. This past year, he was appointed to the National Wheelchair Basketball Association’s High Performance Committee. He currently works full-time at Numotion, a company that provides mobility devices and complex rehab technology to people with disabilities.

Josh lives in Council Bluffs with his wife, Jarolin. Jarolin is an immigrant and the couple has a bilingual, multi-cultural household. Josh announced he was running for Iowa’s 20th House of Representatives district in March 2022. After a recount requested by his Republican opponent Sarah Abdouch, it was confirmed Turek won the election by six votes. He assumed office on January 9, 2023. He has worked extensively as an advocate for disabled people. He enters the Iowa state legislature as the first permanently disabled member in its history.