Meet the Candidate

Hi, I'm Sheila Dibb.   

I hadn't really contemplated, until this race, how deep the roots of service go in my family.  My great uncle was a 4th degree Knight of Columbus; he and my grandfather helped build their French-Canadian neighborhood's church after both serving in Korea. My mother was a nurse in Lowell and volunteered for her church and St. Vincent de Paul.  My brothers are not only on-call firefighters since age 18, both they and their spouses work in state or municipal government... and quite frankly among the 4 of them, the community service projects are too numerous to list.  We have a kid out in LA at art school who just became an EMT and volunteers at an animal shelter. A son who tutors. And my other great-uncle, in India... well, he worked with Gandhi.   I am pretty proud of this family legacy, proud to continue this strong tradition of public service.

While my professional experience was in property and project management, my passion has always been local government, even in college.  My focus has been on hyper-local politics, the front line of representing the people.  I was a 13 year veteran of my town of Rutland's selectboard. I am proud of my record in Rutland, which included state-level advocacy for many of the issues our communities are concerned about: desperately needed changes to the state education foundation formula, fully funded regional transportation; water protection and sewer infrastructure; public safety, public works & good community policing; support and protection for our communities' "third places" - our libraries, senior centers, parks, conservation land; affordable housing, municipal infrastructure, and locally owned businesses.

During the Covid-19 crisis, I worked for the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women as a coordinator for the Girls Initiative, transforming a beloved event to be fully remote, so that a crucial opportunity for young women to have a voice could still occur. I was first a volunteer, then a Communications Coordinator for the Rutland Regional Vaccine Clinic, the largest regional Covid-19 vaccine clinic outside of Boston, with over 90,000 doses provided to people who journeyed to the center of Massachusetts from across the entire state - working with that collaborative team was one of the honors of my life.  

I have lived in Worcester County for over 40 years.  I know all of this district's towns and cities - there's not one where I don't have a favorite restaurant or store or bike or hiking trail, not one where I haven't followed pressing community issues like crumbling foundations, Mary Lane Hospital's closure, the purchase of the Becker College campus, flooding in Princeton, Worcester's housing crisis,  the landfill in Hardwick, the revitalization of Gardner...  just to name a few.   I understand the needs of municipalities and the needs of the individual residents in them - and that a state senator's role should be to every resident of those municipalities - to be their voice, and to advocate to get them what they need from the Statehouse to succeed.

Serving this district, representing its people, as its Senator, with a focus on our 22 communities' local issues - even the hard ones, and with a goal of tangible results, is at the core of this campaign.

If you'd like to meet Rowena and me on the campaign trail (though she strongly prefers a Mount Wachusett trail), connect with us here. I look forward to meeting with you, and hearing about the issues that are important to you.

Sheila