Year Honored: 2018

Birth: 1962 -

Born in: Pennsylvania

Biography

Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester represents Delaware in the U.S. Senate. She was elected in 2024
after serving four terms as Delaware’s sole representative in the U.S. House of Representatives.
In the House, she served on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which oversees
health care, the environment, commerce and trade, energy policy, telecommunications,
manufacturing, and consumer protection.
Senator Blunt Rochester is a leading voice in Congress on workforce issues, the future of work,
and building an economy that works for everyone. As former Secretary of Labor and State
Personnel Director, she leverages her expertise to advocate for policies that support growth and
ensure working families earn a living wage. She founded and co-chaired the bipartisan
Congressional Future of Work Caucus in the House. After seeing the impact of empty grocery
shelves during the pandemic, she also led the charge in Congress to address the supply chain
crisis and bring manufacturing jobs back to Delaware and the United States.
As a former statewide health official, Senator Blunt Rochester brings a broad perspective on
health care policy. She has worked as an implementer at the Delaware Department of Health and
Social Services, a negotiator as State Personnel Director, and an advocate as CEO of the
Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League.
She has been committed to reducing health care and prescription drug costs for middle-class
families, addressing health disparities in communities of color, and combating the opioid and
addiction epidemic. When the Heroin epidemic devastated Delaware communities, she acted
urgently and became a member of the Bipartisan Heroin and Opioid Task Force, a coalition of
over 100 members dedicated to passing critical legislation to combat opioid addiction.
Additionally, Senator Blunt Rochester has played a pivotal role in passing landmark legislation
like the Inflation Reduction Act and the Telehealth Modernization Act – which both work to
lower the cost of prescription drugs and increase access to healthcare for America’s seniors and
those with disabilities.
A strong advocate for the nursing workforce, she championed the passage of the TRAIN Act,
which protected a key nursing education pipeline to address the nursing shortage. Throughout
her career, she has fought for underserved communities and is a leader on public health
promotion and programs that help Americans live healthier and longer.
In the 115th Congress, Senator Blunt Rochester became the first Delawarean in over 120 years to
serve on the House Committee on Agriculture. She played a key role in crafting the 2018 Farm
Bill, a five-year reauthorization that supports the farm safety net, nutrition programs for
vulnerable populations, land-grant universities, and agricultural research. A champion of criminal
justice reform, she introduced the groundbreaking Clean Slate Act, which seals the federal
records of nonviolent offenders. This legislation aims to provide individuals with opportunities to
secure good-paying jobs, pursue education, and access housing after reentering society. Research
uncovered by the Center for American Progress estimates individuals who are shut out of
opportunities because of their criminal records costs the U.S. economy up to $87 billion annually. The Clean Slate Act would help boost the national economy while helping these
individuals gain good paying jobs.
After hearing concerns from homeowners in North Bethany Beach about an error in the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service’s coastal mapping, Senator Blunt Rochester introduced the
Strengthening Coastal Communities Act in her first term, which corrected the error, supported
environmental preservation, and became her first bill enacted into law. She has since
spearheaded the SHORRE Act to improve coastal resilience up and down Delaware’s coastlines,
so communities and homeowners are protected from rising seas and extreme weather. She
authored legislation that invested $100 million to decarbonize the Port of Wilmington. This
federal investment came as part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Ports
Program in the Inflation Reduction Act, legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by
President Biden in 2022. And in 2024, she co-led the bipartisan Bolstering Ecosystems Against
Coastal Harm Act (BEACH Act). This legislation addresses climate-driven risks like flooding,
storm surges, and sea level rise by amending and reauthorizing the Coastal Barrier Resources Act
(CBRA) and updating critical coastal maps.
Born in Philadelphia and raised in Wilmington, Senator Blunt Rochester graduated from Padua
Academy. She earned a degree in International Relations from Fairleigh Dickinson University
and, as a working mother, completed her master’s degree in Urban Affairs and Public Policy at
the University of Delaware. She resides in Wilmington, Delaware. She is the proud mother of
two adult children, Alex and Alyssa, and mother-in-law to Ebony. She is also the grandmother of
her first granddaughter, Lennox.

Sources and Additional Readings

About Lisa. Lisa Blunt Rochester US Senator for Delaware. Downloaded Bio. Retrieved February 10, 2026 from https://www.bluntrochester.senate.gov/about/

Delaware Ephemera Collection Related to Politics, Policy, and Government . Manuscript and Archival Collection Finding Aids . (n.d.). Retrieved November 4, 2021, from https://library.udel.edu/special/findaids/view?docId=ead%2Fmss0733.xml%3Bquery.