Senator Janet Petersen Contact information

Janet Petersen, born on August 1, 1970, is an American politician and a Democratic member of the Iowa Senate. She represents the 18th District since January 2013. Before her tenure in the Senate, she represented the 64th district in the Iowa House of Representatives between 2001 and 2013.

Petersen served as the Senate Minority Leader, making her the first woman to lead the Senate Democratic caucus. She has also served as the Chairwoman of the Government Oversight Committee and Vice Chair of the Senate Commerce Committee.

She was born in Beaverdale, Iowa, and received her BA in communications and public relations from the University of Northern Iowa. She later earned her MA in integrated communications from Drake University.

Before her election to the state legislature, Petersen worked for the ‘92 Clinton-Gore campaign, the American Heart Association, and Strategic America, a marketing communications firm. Since becoming a politician, much of her private work has focused on making Iowa “the safest place in the nation to have a baby”. In 2004, she helped launch a stillbirth registry project that brings in more than $2 million a year to find causes and cures of stillbirths.

Petersen is a passionate advocate for children and families. As a young girl, she saw first-hand how life can change in an instant when her dad died of melanoma. Fortunately for Janet and her sister Barb, their mom had an education to fall back on, which prevented them from slipping into poverty. That is one of the reasons Janet is a supporter of public education and equal pay for equal work.

Outside of the Legislature, Janet founded a nonprofit organization called Healthy Birth Day, Inc., with four other Des Moines-area moms. The organization is best known for its Count the Kicks campaign that educates parents-to-be on how to track their babies’ movements to reduce their risk of stillbirth. Its lifesaving message has spread around the globe with parents-to-be using the free Count the Kicks app in all 50 states and 150 countries.

Janet lives north of Beaverdale, not far from where she grew up, with her husband Brian Pattinson, an Ames native, and their three kids – Charlie, Maggie and Buck.