Meet Allaina
I chose Bolingbrook. I keep choosing it.
I am running because I love this village enough to celebrate what is beautiful, name what is unfinished, and work beside my neighbors to make Bolingbrook deliver for all of us.
A home built around belonging
Difference should be ordinary.
More than twenty years ago, my husband and I chose Bolingbrook for our family.
We wanted our children to grow up in a place where the people next door might speak another language, practice another faith, come from another country, move through the world in another way, or carry a completely different life story, and still be neighbors in every sense of the word.
I also chose Bolingbrook because I use a wheelchair, and this village had made an extraordinary decision: new homes would be built so that more people could enter them. Visitability gave me something most people never have to think about, the dignity of being able to go to a neighbor's home for coffee, a birthday, or an ordinary Tuesday.
That is what policy can do. It can turn belonging from a nice idea into a front door you can actually cross.
Public service is in my DNA
The women who raised me taught me what courage looks like when nobody is applauding.
My great-grandmother was a suffragette and newspaper reporter. My grandmother lost her husband in war and pursued pre-med studies in the 1940s, when few women were welcomed into that world.
My mother served with DuPage Women Against Rape, supported women in courtrooms and hospitals, worked to prevent child abuse, took part in the arts, and became the community mom who made room for every child who needed safety, affection, or someone to say, “You matter.”
When I broke my neck at 15, my mother became my fiercest civil-rights advocate. She pushed our school system to include me instead of separating me. After my father died following a long battle with cancer, she became a single mother to a quadriplegic teenager and another teenage daughter, and carried all of it with grace, grit, and gratitude.
She taught me that when you see a need, you do not look away and assume someone else will handle it. You step toward it.
I cannot promise to solve every problem. I can promise I will not look the other way.
More than three decades at wheel height
I know how decisions made in meeting rooms show up in real life.
I was a gymnast training for the AAU Junior Olympic Nationals when an accident left me with a complete C5-C6 spinal cord injury.
That perspective has taught me to notice the distance between policy and daily life: a curb cut or a set of steps, a working bus lift or a missed appointment, a welcoming event or a family left at home, a ballot someone can cast or a voice the system never hears.
Disability has made me an adaptive planner, a patient coalition builder, a calm problem-solver, and a person who understands interdependence. None of us succeeds entirely alone. Good government should make cooperation easier.
A record of building doors
I try to turn “someone should” into “let's do it.”
I am a graphic designer and owner of Free Wheelin' Design, a mission-driven branding and communications studio I have run for more than 25 years. That work has taught me to make complicated information understandable, clarify what an organization stands for, and design around the people who actually need to use it.
I founded and chair Bolingbrook Pride, a volunteer-run organization built around welcoming spaces, non-punitive education, and the belief that connection changes hearts. I serve as Vice Chair of the Bolingbrook Arts Council and helped create the Celebration of Special Recreation, which brings adaptive arts, sports, music, theater, and community organizations together.
I designed the Village Hall mosaic that says “welcome” in many of the languages spoken in Bolingbrook, because that is who I believe we are.
Why Trustee
A trustee should do more than attend meetings and vote.
A trustee should understand the departments doing the daily work, ask where tax dollars are going, explain decisions in language residents can use, connect people with the right person, and carry community knowledge into every discussion.
I want residents to know not only that I listened, but what I learned, where their concern went, and what happens next.
Independent does not mean alone.
I answer to residents first, not to a slate or party organization. Collaboration is a strength, and I will work with anyone who wants to make Bolingbrook better. But my first loyalty is to the neighbors who sent me there.
Selected service and preparation
Learning, leading, and showing up.
- 2021 Female Citizen of the Year, Bolingbrook
- Founder and Chair, Bolingbrook Pride
- Vice Chair, Bolingbrook Arts Council
- Gubernatorial appointee, Illinois Housing Task Force, Aging Working Group
- Board member, CHANGE Illinois
- Vice President of DEIA, Illinois NOW
- Vice Chair, Accessibility Advisory Board, Trans Up Front Illinois
- Founding member, Accessible Community Task Force of Naperville
- Creator and trainer, Five Doors of Access framework
- Graduate of Emerge America, IWILTA, Disability Lead, BACKBONES, and Victory Institute candidate training
Community in practice
The work is relational.
Your experience matters
Now I want to hear your story.
A campaign about listening has to make it easy to speak, and has to show what happens next.