Biography

U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth is an Iraq War Veteran, Purple Heart recipient and former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs who was among the first handful of Army women to fly combat missions during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Duckworth served in the Reserve Forces for 23 years before retiring at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in 2014. She was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016 after representing Illinois’s Eighth Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives for two terms.

In 2004, Duckworth was deployed to Iraq as a Blackhawk helicopter pilot for the Illinois Army National Guard. On November 12, 2004, her helicopter was hit by an RPG and she lost her legs and partial use of her right arm. Senator Duckworth spent the next year recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where she quickly became an advocate for her fellow Soldiers. After she recovered, she became Director of the Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs, where she helped create a tax credit for employers that hire Veterans, established a first-in-the-nation 24/7 Veterans crisis hotline and developed innovative programs to improve Veterans’ access to housing and health care.

In 2009, President Obama appointed Duckworth as an Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs, where she worked to help end Veteran homelessness, address the unique challenges faced by female as well as Native American Veterans and create the Office of Online Communications to improve the VA’s accessibility for all Veteran generations.

In the U.S. House, Duckworth was an advocate for working families and job creation, introducing bills like her bipartisan Friendly Airports for Mothers (FAM) Act— which is now law — to ensure new mothers have access to safe, clean and accessible lactation rooms when traveling through airports and helping lead passage of legislation that enhanced efforts to track and reduce Veteran suicides. She also passed her Troop Talent Act to help returning Veterans find jobs in the private sector and worked to cut waste and fraud at the Pentagon and throughout government.

As Senator, Duckworth is helping lead the charge to protect reproductive freedoms—including the IVF treatments that millions of American families, like her own, rely on to start and grow their families—and fully restore the protections of Roe v. Wade. She also continues her lifelong mission of supporting, protecting and keeping the promises we’ve made to our Veterans as well as ensuring that we stand fully behind the troops our nation sends into danger overseas.

She is a champion for working families pushing for common-sense solutions like growing manufacturing and other good-paying jobs.

She is a champion for working families pushing for common-sense solutions like growing manufacturing and other good-paying jobs while supporting small businesses and investing in communities that have been ignored for too long. As Chair of the Senate’s Aviation Safety Subcommittee, Duckworth helped shepherd 2024’s landmark FAA Reauthorization Law through Congress, authoring several key provisions to help improve flying safety, expand the aviation workforce and enhance consumer protections for travelers with disabilities.

As co-founder of the Senate’s first-ever Environmental Justice Caucus and it’s first-ever Lead Task Force, Duckworth successfully pushed to rebuild our nation’s crumbling infrastructure and protect Illinoisans from lead poisoning, writing her landmark Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act —which became law as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021—to make the most significant investment in our nation’s water infrastructure in American history, providing more than $35 billion for water resource development and lead removal projects nationwide.

In 2018, after Duckworth became the first Senator to give birth while serving in office, she sent a message to working families across the country about the value of family-friendly policies by securing an historic rules change that allows Senators to bring their infant children onto the Senate floor.

Senator Duckworth serves on several influential committees where she uses her position to help address the everyday needs of Illinois's working families. As a member on the Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee, Duckworth is a leader in helping make air travel safer and improving transportation accessibility for all Americans. And as a member of the Armed Services Committee, the Foreign Relations Committee and the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, Duckworth—who has dedicated her life to serving America’s servicemembers and Veterans—has continued building her strong record of leadership on national security and foreign policy issues, including successfully working to strengthen our relations with Indo-Pacific nations and improving security in the region and around the globe, all while also securing significant international investments in Illinois.

The first Senate bill Duckworth introduced became law in record time. As a result of her achievements, Duckworth was recognized by the Center for Effective Lawmaking as among the top five most effective Democratic Senators overall, the second-most effective on defense issues in the 117th Congress and the most effective on transportation issues in the 116th Congress, and was recognized as the most effective freshman Democratic Senator in the 115th Congress.

Duckworth is fluent in Thai and Indonesian. She attended college at the University of Hawaii and earned a Master of Arts in International Affairs from the George Washington University. Following graduation, Duckworth moved to Illinois and began pursuing a Ph.D. in Political Science at Northern Illinois University and later worked for Rotary International. To this day, the Senator volunteers at local food pantries and participates in community service projects in her free time.

Senator Duckworth and her husband Bryan are the proud parents of two daughters, Abigail and Maile.