| Sue Cahill is serving her first term in the Iowa House of Representatives. She is the Ranking Member of the Veterans Affairs Committee, and serves on the Administration and Rules, Education, and Labor Committees, as well as the Education Appropriations Subcommittee.
Sue was born in Kansas City, Missouri to Alfred and Joan Koenig and lived in Missouri until 1990. She married John Cahill, a native of Fort Dodge, in 1982. When their oldest child turned five, John stated that he wanted to move back to Iowa so his children could participate in the nationally acclaimed education system. John and Sue had six boys, Jim, Tim, Tom, Pat, Mike and Joe. John died from cancer in 2006. Sue continued to raise their boys and is proud of their success as adults today. She often states that the boys are John's legacy.
Sue attended Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas and graduated with a communications degree in 1981. She worked at a not-for-profit organization and an automotive manufacturing company, specializing in program management and volunteer and employee training.
In 1990, the family moved to Marshalltown where John worked for the local hospital. With four children aged five and under, Sue started her own business of providing child care in her home. She successfully ran a home child care business for almost 10 years.
As her children got older, Sue went back to school to earn her teaching degree from Buena Vista University. She began working as a kindergarten teacher at Woodbury Elementary school in the Marshalltown Community School District in 1999. She continued in kindergarten for 12 years. She has worked as an elementary Teacher Librarian and as part of the Iowa Teacher Leadership Compensation Grant in the role of a Curriculum and Professional Development Leader at the district level coordinating the new teachers in their mentoring programs. Before retiring from teaching in 2022, she was teaching as a Title 1 Reading specialist at Woodbury Elementary School.
Sue is a member of the Marshalltown Education Association, where she has served as president for three terms. She has served on the ISEA regional board and state-wide Executive Committee. Sue served as the state-wide coach for the NEA Teacher Leadership Initiative program in which teachers learned and practiced leadership skills within their own districts and locals.
In 2017, Sue was elected to the Marshalltown City Council to represent the First Ward of the city. Within 7 months of her election, Marshalltown was hit with an EF3 tornado. The First Ward was especially hard hit. Sue collected over $12,000 in gift cards that she distributed door to door to the residents on the north side of Marshalltown who were hard hit and least prepared to handle the devastation of the tornado. |