Valerie Jensen’s first day as director of St. Paul’s Department of Human Rights and Equal Economic Opportunity (HREEO) was January 6. Her first meeting about COVID-19 was on March 6.
The world has changed quickly in the weeks since then. It’s hard to imagine a corner of our lives that has not been affected by the virus’s spread. Each answer leads to more questions. In March, we followed Jensen through part of her day as her office began to navigate the shifting landscape and determine how best to serve the citizens of St. Paul.
“If we were at war, people would come together,” says Jensen. “But this is a different kind of war, and we have to fight it while we’re social distancing.”
Jensen graduated from Carleton in 1987 with a degree in political science and a concentration in African and African American studies. A student leader in the Carleton Democrats, Jensen took every class that Paul Wellstone taught and regards him as a mentor. Wellstone recommended her to participate in a Model United Nations gathering at American University in Washington, D.C., between her junior and senior years.
That experience and her work with Wellstone on poverty issues and grassroots organizing—combined with her experience growing up in a family of social activists—sparked her passion to work with and on behalf of underserved and underrepresented people.
Born in Minnesota to a mixed-race couple, she was adopted by an African American couple and raised in the western suburbs of the Twin Cities. Her adoptive father taught special education and her mother worked with students who had emotional and behavior disorders.
After Carleton, Jensen studied at William Mitchell College of Law. Her long history of public service followed an arc from the St. Paul Department of Public Safety to the Minnesota Supreme Court, where she worked with Chief Justice Alan Page to implement the Race and Bias Task Force. From there, she moved to the Ramsey County attorney’s office to work on the Truancy Intervention Program, focused on keeping students out of court and in school. Eventually, Jensen returned to her law school alma mater (now called Mitchell Hamline School of Law) to start and lead the Office of Multicultural Affairs.
Working for Melvin Carter, the first black mayor of St. Paul, has been a remarkable opportunity, Jensen says. “In all the places I’ve worked previously, I have almost always been the only woman of color in leadership. Now, at 55, I have the opportunity to sit in a room with people who look like me, to be a part of this team that the mayor has built, and to collaborate across differences. It’s an honor for me.”