Cathy Glasson is the President of SEIU Local 199 representing thousands of nurses, healthcare workers and school support employees across Iowa. She is a registered nurse who worked in the intensive care unit at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics where she led the effort to unionize her fellow nurses 18 years ago. She serves on the Executive Board of the two million member Service Employees International Union and has helped lead efforts to organize nurses and other hospital workers across the nation.  Cathy grew up in Spencer, a small town in northwest Iowa. Her dad was a truck driver and her mom worked behind the counter at the Sears & Roebuck catalog store. Her folks were able to make a decent living but those days are gone for most Iowans.  Cathy is exploring a run for Governor because she believes working people have been getting beaten up in Iowa for too long and our elected officials have done too little to stand up and fight for them. She is focused on a bold, progressive agenda that puts the needs of hard-working Iowans first. She supports raising Iowa’s minimum wage to $15, making it easier for workers to join a union or come together in employee organizations, a universal single-payer healthcare system to cover every Iowan and a moratorium on new and expanding factory farms to clean up Iowa’s polluted water.  Cathy lives in Coralville, Iowa with her husband Matt, a labor educator. She is a proud mother and grandmother.