The Honorable Elizabeth Esty (D-CT, 2013-2019)

Elizabeth Esty served as the U.S. Representative for Connecticut’s 5th congressional district covering central and northwest Connecticut from 2013 to 2019. Prior to serving in the House of Representatives, she served in the Connecticut House of Representatives, representing the 103rd Assembly District, which consisted of Cheshire and parts of Hamden and Wallingford. She has also served two terms on the Cheshire Town Council. Congresswoman Esty was born in Oak Park, Illinois, and was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as rural Minnesota. 

She earned a B. A. in Government from Harvard College in 1981 and a J. D. from Yale Law School in 1985. She also studied International Relations at L'Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris for a year on a Rotary International Graduate Scholarship. Esty has been a law clerk for a federal judge, a Supreme Court lawyer at Sidley Austin LLP in Washington, D.C., a professor at American University, and a medical policy researcher at Yale. While in Congress, she served on the Committees on Veterans’ Affairs, Transportation and Infrastructure, and Science Space and Technology. She also served as Vice Chair of the US House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force and as co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus's infrastructure Task Force, and was an active participant in the Aspen Congressional Program. She is the author of several dozens bills and amendments that were signed into law by both Democratic and Republican presidents. Representative Esty has been married to Professor Dan Esty for 35 years and has three adult children.