Mikie Sherrill was sworn in January 20 as New Jersey’s 57th governor, becoming the state’s second female leader after Christine Todd Whitman and the first Democratic woman and military veteran to hold the office.
Born on January 19, 1972, Sherrill was raised in Virginia and graduated from South Lakes High School before attending the U.S. Naval Academy. Prior to entering politics, she served in the Navy and later worked as an attorney and federal prosecutor in New Jersey.
The former veteran who served in the Navy for a decade, Sherrill, stated that the reason behind her wanting to join the Navy was to become a Naval aviator. She credits her grandfather, a World War II veteran and a pilot, as her utmost inspiration. In her high school years, at her father’s suggestion, she applied to the US Naval Academy, which had just started accepting women. After graduation, she became a Navy helicopter pilot, flew the H3 Sea King, and ran numerous missions in Europe and in the Middle East. Additionally, as reported by Britannica, she “served as an advisor on Russian policy and worked on nuclear treaties.” . In 2003, Sherrill decided to leave the Navy, married Jason Heldberg, a fellow Navy veteran, and started a career in law and politics.
After leaving the military, Sherrill received a law degree from Georgetown University in 2007 and worked in the litigation department of one of the biggest law firms in the world at Kirkland and Ellis in New York City. In 2012, she left the department and instead joined the US Attorney’s office for the District of New Jersey. She began working there as an outreach and reentry coordinator for three years, and then got promoted to assistant U.S. Attorney, reports New Jersey Globe. However, her position as an assistant US attorney was very short-lived as she quickly entered the world of politics.
In 2017, determined to fight for her country in a different way, Sherrill started her political journey, running for New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives. “I fought for this country my whole adult life. I have four kids. There wasn’t a point where I could consciously decide that I was not going to fight for the future of this country,” she recalled to Glamour.
Sherrill was elected in 2018 as a Democrat to the One Hundred Sixteenth Congress and served in the House of Representatives for the next three congressional terms until her resignation on November 20, 2025 due to the confirmation of her becoming the new governor of New Jersey.
After narrowly beating out her Republican rival Jack Ciatarelli, Sherrill became the 57th governor of New Jersey. She campaigned on fixing the high cost of living in New Jersey, what she termed an “affordability crisis.” Sherrill has been particularly critical of President Donald Trump and his administration. In her speech in front of a crowd of over 2,000 at the Newark theater NJPAC, The New Jersey Monitor reported that she “connected the nation’s fight for independence from a king 250 years ago with opposition to the Trump administration’s actions today.”
Although faced with backlash from the White House, Mikie Sherrill is casting a clear vision for her state early on in her term. On the day of her inauguration, she signed two executive bills, one that “delivers immediate ratepayer relief and freezes rate hikes for New Jersey families” on electricity bills, and another that “takes action to massively expand in-state power generation—including solar and battery storage in the short-term, and nuclear power in the long-term, to lower electric bills.” She has taken concrete actions towards her promise of lowering utility costs and stated that she will continue to fight for the people of New Jersey.
Meanwhile, residents of New Jersey are watching in anticipation to see what other policies Sherrill will put in place for New Jerseyans.
