About Michelle
A business owner who will open the 560-page MWRD budget, find the waste, and fight to lower your property tax bill.
Fiscally focused. Mission driven.
Michelle Pennington is running for the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD) Board of Commissioners, bringing a rare combination of financial acumen and genuine commitment to protecting both taxpayers and the region’s most vital infrastructure. Michelle is uniquely positioned to serve as a vigilant steward of the MWRD’s multi-billion-dollar budget, to scrutinize every line item, identify inefficiencies, and ensure that public dollars are spent wisely.
Michelle in Deng Bouche Nepal
At the heart of Michelle’s candidacy is fiscal responsibility. She is a mom who has managed a successful real estate investment business since 2007. She has hands-on experience reading complex financial statements, evaluating capital expenditures, and making hard decisions that balance long-term value with near-term cost. If elected, Michelle will apply that same discipline to the MWRD, working to ensure that taxpayers across Cook County get the most from every dollar invested in the district’s operations and infrastructure.
In 2026 Michelle trekked the Himalayas with a group of dynamic women. Pushing herself across some of the world’s most demanding terrain, surrounded by majestic and humbling landscapes. She gained a renewed gratitude for the comforts of home, an appreciation for the systems quietly working behind the scenes to keep communities safe and healthy. In high-altitude settlements like Lobuche, where pit latrines replace plumbing and no municipal infrastructure exists, human waste seeping into the water supply is a daily danger. Back in Chicago, we're lucky to have systems quietly working behind the scenes to keep our communities safe and healthy — until a basement floods, a waterway is contaminated, or a treatment plant fails. Michelle has seen what life looks like when that system doesn't exist. The job of the MWRD Board is to make sure Chicagoans never have to find out.
- Sierra Club Member
- Illinois Water Environment Association (IWEA) Member
- Policy Circle Founding Principles & Local Government CLER Graduate
- Policy Circle State and Local Government CLER Graduate
Michelle stepped up to run for Cook County Clerk in 2024 because someone had to. Decades of one-party dominance have bred the kind of complacency that costs taxpayers. Running as a challenger meant facing long odds, but Michelle believed then, and believes now, that Cook County residents deserve officials who are accountable to taxpayers.
Michelle grew up in the suburbs of Dallas. She moved to Chicago and continued her education at DePaul University. In the early 2000s she worked for iWorks, an early internet startup.
In 2001, Michelle became Vice President of Operations at Computers for Schools, a public-private partnership dedicated to placing corporate computer donations into Chicago Public Schools. She also managed co-workers in a City of Chicago back-to-work program to deliver job-skills training to individuals re-entering our communities after incarceration.
Her political start came early when she supported and volunteered as part of the congressional campaign of Dick Armey. From 2009 to 2012 Michelle was president of the Friends of Holstein Park, a community advisory organization in Bucktown.
Michelle Pennington is ready to fight for taxpayers, protect our waterways, and ensure that the infrastructure that makes Chicago great is managed with the care and discipline it deserves.