Brooke Lierman is a civil rights attorney, mother of two children, a two-term State Delegate, and the Comptroller-Elect of the State of Maryland. After running a strong, policy-focused and grassroots-led two-year campaign, she was elected with over 58% of the vote in November 2022. She will be Maryland’s first female Comptroller and is the first woman independently-elected to statewide state office.
An Effective State Legislator
Brooke has been a State Delegate from Baltimore City since 2015. She has served on several Committees, including the Appropriations Committee – overseeing the State’s $50+ billion budgets – and on the Environment and Transportation Committee. She has also been the Co-Chair of the Joint Committee on Pensions, a member of the Joint Committee to End Homelessness, and she founded and previously chaired the Maryland Transit Caucus in 2019.
In addition to playing an active and engaged role in her district, Brooke has successfully passed landmark legislation to invest in and improve public transit; end suspension and expulsion of young students; fund evidence-based gun violence prevention programs; aid sex trafficking victims; close loopholes in our family and paid leave laws and much more. In 2019, working with environmental groups and small businesses around the state, she passed the nation’s first statewide ban on styrofoam food and beverage containers, and in 2020 she passed the HOME Act, banning housing discrimination based on the renter’s source of income. In 2021, she passed the Digital Connectivity Act, creating the Office of Statewide Broadband and mandating that all residents be connected to high-speed, affordable internet by 2025.
She is a champion at constituent work, an advocate with state agencies on behalf of small businesses and organizations and remains connected to the communities she serves year-round. Amidst the health and economic crises created by COVID-19, Brooke organized food relief for constituents and led the successful effort to bring World Central Kitchen (led by Chef Jose Andres) to Baltimore to feed thousands of Baltimoreans in need.
A Lifelong Organizer
Brooke spent her childhood years in Washington, D.C., moving with her family to Montgomery County in middle school and graduating from Walt Whitman High School. After graduating from Dartmouth College, Brooke spent several years organizing for change at the grassroots level. She was an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer at the DREAM Program, a mentoring program that forms partnerships between college students and children living in subsidized housing that has had a profound and sustained positive effect on the lives of the low-income children it serves. She still believes strongly in the power of mentorship.
She worked as a field organizer for Senator Paul Wellstone’s 2002 reelection campaign, organizing rural counties in Southeast Minnesota. Brooke still carries Paul’s message that “We all do better when we all do better” in her political and personal political life. Brooke also worked as a field director for Howard Dean’s presidential campaign and later for the Kerry-Edwards campaign. This early experience organizing and working with people from all walks of life taught her the importance of working at the local grassroots level to organize for systemic change and build community and political power.
A Lawyer for the People
Brooke attended law school to work with and empower people to take charge of adverse situations confronting them and to fight injustice one client at a time. While attending the University of Texas School of Law, she fought for clients in need of better housing as part of the Legal Aid Fair Housing Clinic. She was also president of the American Constitution Society.
After graduating, Brooke returned to Maryland and completed a clerkship at the U.S. Federal District Court in Baltimore and Greenbelt. She then joined the civil law firm, Brown Goldstein and Levy LLP, where she represents a range of clients, including workers whose wages have been unfairly withheld, disabled citizens seeking access to public facilities and wrongfully convicted Marylanders in pursuit of an equal education.
A Community Advocate
Brooke has always been an active participant in her community and across Baltimore to promote thriving neighborhoods. She worked as pro bono counsel for several community associations and a local church to create safe neighborhoods by shutting down dangerous bars and liquor stores. She also performed volunteer expungements for the Homeless Persons Representation Project and served on the citywide Red Line Citizens Advisory Council prior to the cancellation of the Red Line by Governor Hogan. After Donald Trump’s election in 2016, she worked to form a coalition of women activists called Baltimore Women United.
Brooke currently serves on the Board of the Downtown Partnership and the Board of the Baltimore Museum of Art. She lives with her husband and two children, Teddy (10) and Eliza (5) in Fell’s Point. She is a lifelong Orioles fan.
Authorized by Brooke Lierman for Maryland. Chairman, Alvin Lee. Treasurer, Candace Dodson-Reed.