Nigerian-American Esther Agbaje has won the Minnesota House of Representatives seat in the 2020 United States general election.
35-year-old Agbaje will represent District 59B in the 134-member House on the platform of the US Democratic Party.
She secured a total of 17,396 votes, which represents 74.6 percent of the total votes cast, while Shilepsky, a candidate of the Republican Party, scored 4,128 votes, representing 17.7 percent of the total votes cast.
The daughter of Nigerian immigrants, Agbaje was born in St. Paul, the state capital of Minnesota.
Her father Rev. John, an Episcopal Church priest, met her mother Bunmi, a librarian at the University of Minnesota where they were studying.
Agbaje has a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from George Washington University, Washington, D.C., a master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Pennsylvania, and also a law degree from Harvard University.
She once served at the US Department of State as a foreign affairs officer, charged with managing the rule of law projects in the Middle East.
She currently works as an attorney in Minneapolis with focus on general civil litigation and medical malpractice.