You are a young businesswoman who has never held an elected office. How do you intend to convince voters that you are experienced enough for the job?

Just because I don't have experience in government office doesn't mean that the other work that I've done isn't relevant to the job. I'm a mother and I've built a business that employs a lot of local women. It brings hundreds of thousands of dollars into Nebraska, and the experience I have working on the boards of nonprofits has really given me a lot of skill with building consensus and developing public and private partnerships between nonprofits and different companies and other interests in the community. I know how to run an innovative and profitable company, and I've been recognized for my ability to grow staff and revenue, in a startup environment, without incurring a bunch of debt. I think that it's really great that I have this creative mind, and I have this experience, and I think that that is something I can apply to the state budget.

When I think about, what is a politician really? A politician is somebody who sees problems in government and wants to fix them. OK, well, what's an entrepreneur? An entrepreneur is somebody who sees a problem with a product and wants to fix it. And an advocate and activist is somebody who sees a problem in society and wants to fix it. I don't think that being from the private sector or having a background like, I'm not a lawyer, I haven't been a lobbyist, things like that ... It doesn't mean that my experience isn't completely applicable to the work of politics.

Read the full article in Cosmopolitan by Robin Marty