About Carol Sente

Carol Sente believes that the highest calling is service to others, a lesson she learned from her parents, who immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe to seek a better life following the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and devastation of World War II.

Carol grew up in the northern suburb of Glenview, the middle child of three girls. Carol and her sisters remained close and attended Indiana University together. Carol earned a business degree in Indiana and has taken master’s degree coursework at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. After tragically losing her older sister, Christine, in an auto accident, Carol became an active volunteer to help others coping with grief. She has served as a counselor at the YMCA camp “I Am Me” for young burn victims and helped mentor counselors in-training.

She has also volunteered for five years with Marcie’s Place Children’s Grieving Camp as a counselor working with those who have lost family members, and on the board of the Sommer Memorial Foundation, which provides scholarships to high school seniors who have lost a parent.

As a state representative, Sente has drawn on her experiences as a small business owner to help craft better public policy. To help the state account for every dime it spends, Carol is standing up to legislative leaders and is working in a bipartisan way to reform the state budget process by requiring that the budget be balanced and that performance-based reviews are conducted to identify and eliminate programs that are not working.

Carol has lived in Vernon Hills for over 10 years.  She is the former owner of the architectural firm SRBL Architects in Deerfield, IL, a firm that specialized in designing recreational facilities, public safety buildings, and other municipal structures with a focus on green design and technology to help reduce the operational cost and environmental impact of new buildings. She is the former vice president of the Vernon Hills Park District Board, where she served for four years.

Her legislative priorities include creating good-paying jobs in the region, cleaning up state government by making it more transparent and stopping pay-to-play politics, and getting the state budget back on track to ensure that important services are available and accessible for seniors, veterans, and people living with disabilities. Carol has also focused on bring employers back to our region, protecting our families from criminal predators, improving environmental standards, and improving services and long term care options for seniors.

On September 12, 2009, Carol was sworn in to complete the remainder of the unexpired term of former State Representative Kathy Ryg. She was elected to a full term in November 2010 and is now representing the 59th District in the 97th General Assembly.