Senator Shelly Hettleman was appointed to the Senate and sworn in as the 11th District Senator on February 3, 2020 after having been elected in 2014 to the House of Delegates where she served on the House Appropriations Committee. In the Senate, Sen. Hettleman is a member of the Judicial Proceedings Committee as well as the Joint Committee on Children, Youth & Families and the Joint Committee on the Chesapeake, Atlantic Coastal Bays Critical Area.
Shelly was the lead sponsor of a number of bills that have become law on a variety of important issues: helping college students seek transparency in their student loan debt, expanding tax credit availability for loan debt to graduate students, protecting older adults and children from abuse, requiring for-profit educational institutions to be more transparent and accountable, broadening the access and availability of contraceptives, and creating a statewide standard for the preservation and testing of rape kits are a few of her bills.
Prior to serving in the House of Delegates, Shelly was the Campaign Manager of the 2012 Ben Cardin for Senate campaign that resulted in Sen. Cardin’s resounding re-election. In former positions, Shelly was the founding director of a domestic violence program, worked in financial resource development for a local non-profit organization, served as a Legislative Assistant in the office of then-Congressman Cardin and on the staff of Sen. Barbara Mikulski’s first campaign for U.S. Senate.