Biography
I have been married to my wonderful husband, Fritz, for 22 years, and we have two sons, Wells and Freddie. Fritz, Wells, and I moved from Evanston, IL to South Burlington in 2010, and Freddie arrived in 2013.
Prior to building a life in Vermont, I worked in finance, first in investment banking and private equity in New York, then in community development investing in London and Chicago. Next, I spent 7 years as a consultant to community development financial institutions in developing countries with an emphasis on helping them raise funds to deepen their impact.
In 2013, I paused my career to stay at home with the boys. In 2016, I was inspired to try to give something back to our community by running for the South Burlington School Board. My neighbors elected me to three terms, and I served from 2016 to 2022, including the last year as chair. In 2022, I stepped down from the board and returned to work as a portfolio manager for a community development private equity fund where I support and advise our companies in the healthcare and addiction treatment sectors.
I hold a BA in Russian Language and Literature from Brown University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Candidate occupation
Private Equity Fund Manager
Why are you running for office?
Vermont faces a number of challenges that must be addressed to improve the lives of Vermonters today and in the future. Our education funding system must be overhauled, including the way we fund school construction. We need to protect our environment, improve the health of our waterways, and both improve our resilience to climate change and reduce our contribution to it. We need to create an economic ecosystem that encourages the growth of innovative businesses that support a vision of a healthy, sustainable Vermont. We must ensure that Vermonters have access to the healthcare they need and that they have the means to pay for it. We must continue to do more to address the opioid crisis that has many follow-on impacts on our healthcare, social services, education, and justice systems. These are just some of the complex and interrelated issues that compete for our time and limited resources. To address these issues, leaders must have empathy for their fellow Vermonters, be willing to learn, be able to absorb and analyze information to create proposed solutions and assess their potential impact, and be willing to listen to a wide range of viewpoints. I believe my public service and private sector experiences have allowed me to develop those skills and attributes, which I hope to use to help make Vermont an even better place to live.
Issues in brief
Do you believe Vermonters are better off now than they were 10 years ago?
No
Do you believe Vermont needs a new education funding formula?
Yes
Do you support imposing new taxes on the wealthiest Vermonters?
Yes
Do you support the establishment of overdose prevention centers?
Yes
Do you support a ban on flavored tobacco products?
Yes
Do you support increasing penalties for property crimes such as shoplifting?
No
Do you believe Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election?
Yes
Issues in depth
What would you do to help grow Vermont’s economy?
I would grow Vermont’s economy by helping to create the conditions that will allow our existing businesses to grow and to help new businesses get started. One of the biggest challenges to growing a business in Vermont is access to enough workers with the right skills. We need to grow our workforce by providing educational and training opportunities at all levels from pre-K all the way through training opportunities for adults that allow them to shift careers as the needs of our economy change. Strong childcare and pre-K-12 systems are necessary to allow more Vermonters to enter the workforce and to encourage young families to move here from out of state. Affordable housing is also critical to attracting workers from out of state and allowing young Vermonters to build a path to homeownership that allows them to stay and participate in our economy rather than moving away. I would expand support for accelerators that give new businesses the resources and coaching they need to get started and thrive. Businesses also need access to infrastructure like roads and broadband that will allow them to reach their markets and collaborate with an ever-more-connected global economy. Our regulatory environment can also be improved in a thoughtful way that allows businesses to grow while still protecting our natural environment.
What changes, if any, would you make to the way Vermont funds its schools?
Despite its well-meaning intent to provide equal educational opportunity to all Vermont students, our current school funding system is at risk of reducing the opportunities and services we expect our public schools to provide our children. Voters reject budgets because property taxes continue to increase while students’ needs continue to grow more complex, and the cost to address them increases. At the same time, we have aging school infrastructure that has been difficult to maintain without a state school construction fund since 2008. Because critical pieces of data from the state arrive very late in the school budgeting process, and the yield bill that helps determine tax rates is passed after Town Meeting Day each year, voters are asked to approve budgets without knowing how much their taxes will change as a result. Our school funding system must be updated to make it more predictable for districts and taxpayers. We need a system that is based less on property value and more on income so that Vermonters are not taxed out of their homes when their property values increase faster than their incomes. We must design a separate school construction funding system that allows smart investment in renovation and new construction of school buildings without making districts choose between having enough teachers and having safe, modern learning environments.
Is Vermont doing enough, too much or not enough to address climate change? Please explain.
I do not believe any state is doing enough to address climate change. In Vermont we are reducing over time the incentives for homeowners to install solar panels. We have a public transportation system that is sorely lacking in parts of the state and non-existent in others. We are lacking infrastructure to make electric vehicles a realistic means of transportation for much of the state. We have school and other public buildings across the state that use energy incredibly inefficiently. We could be doing much more to address the energy imbedded in our food system such as encouraging our state-supported school meal program to depend more on food produced in Vermont than on highly processed food delivered from far away producers.
In addition to changes we can support to lessen our contribution to climate change, last year’s flooding has reminded us again how far we still need to go in terms of improving our resilience to climate change. The changes we will need to make to housing, transportation, disaster recovery, and many other systems to support Vermont’s future in a changing climate require thoughtful planning now because they will take decades to fully implement.
Is Vermont doing enough, too much or not enough to regulate gun ownership? Please explain.
I am proud of the work that Vermont has done to improve its regulation of guns over the past decade. The laws that have been passed seem like common sense to me. I do not pretend to be well versed in the arguments for and against additional specific pieces of gun control legislation. This is an area where I need to do more homework.
What would you do to help ease Vermont’s housing crisis?
I applaud the legislature for the Act 250 reform that was passed this year that will make it easier to develop housing in and around towns and village centers. I would work to create further incentives to increase the density of new housing development to prevent sprawl and locate residents nearer to services like shops and schools. I would also support legislation to encourage the development of accessory dwelling units and other initiatives to increase density in previously developed neighborhoods. I would like to see more affordable housing for seniors and would look for ways to support its development. We also need to encourage the development of more housing near our existing jobs to reduce the climate impact of long commutes.
How would you address rising homelessness in Vermont?
Housing, along with healthcare, should be a human right. The biggest factor that needs to be addressed to reduce homelessness is the lack of affordable housing. We need to provide incentives for the creation of more innovative developments, like Allard Square in South Burlington, that combine different sources of funding to build developments that combine market rate and affordable housing and provide a long-term structure for tenants of different income levels to afford them. I would also support the expansion of and development of more organizations like the Champlain Housing Trust that work with individuals to connect them with affordable housing in innovative ways. We also need to address other underlying factors that can contribute to homelessness. For example, we need to increase access to healthcare, mental health, and addiction treatment services to help remove barriers for Vermonters struggling with those issues to earning a stable income.
What would you do to increase access to health care services for Vermonters?
We must both increase the amount of healthcare available to Vermonters and slow the rising cost of healthcare. To improve access to healthcare, we need to attract, retain, and grow through our educational system more doctors and nurses, particularly primary care providers. I would like to see increased support for high school technical education in the medical professions that provides a pathway for our K-12 students to pursue higher education in those fields. I would like to see student loan forgiveness for Vermont students who pursue a medical degree and commit to coming back to Vermont to use it as well as incentives for healthcare professionals to live in our rural areas in addition to our cities.
On the cost side, rising insurance premiums are increasing costs for taxpayers both directly and indirectly through their impact on taxpayer-funded programs like school budgets. We are at risk of a continued erosion of the other services the state provides Vermonters as healthcare eats up a larger and larger portion of our resources. I am encouraged by the state’s selection to collaborate with the federal government through the AHEAD program to work on innovative solutions to bring down the cost of healthcare. I would also like to add programs like a daily physical education requirement and nutrition education to our K-12 schools in order to reduce the underlying causes of poor health.
Financial disclosure
Candidates for state and legislative offices are required to submit a financial disclosure when filing to run. These disclosures include each source, but not the amount, of personal income of each candidate, and of their spouse or domestic partner, that singly or jointly totals more than $5,000 for the previous 12 months. The information provided is an opportunity for voters to learn about candidates’ potential conflicts of interest.
You can find Burkhardt’s financial disclosure here.
Disclaimer
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