Family & Farming | Business Founder & Public Servant | Community Volunteer | Environmentalist
Rebecca's Family Life
Family and Farming
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Rebecca lives with her husband Shawn and their son near Marine on St. Croix.
- Rebecca and her family farm hay.
- A family forefather was CD Gilfillan, a Minnesota pioneer and state legislator who built St Paul's waterworks and founded the MN Republican Party, largely out of his opposition to slavery and mistreatment of Indians.
- He later became a farming innovator and the Gilfillan Estate, the family farm in Gilfillan, MN, near Redwood Falls, is now the site of Minnesota FarmFest.
Business Founder and Public Servant
- Rebecca is Minnesota's State Auditor, a Constitutional Officer elected state-wide.
- She was elected in 2006 with the widest margin of victory over an incumbent in 112 years.
- She is the first woman Democrat to be elected to the post, and was endorsed by the most recent three prior State Auditors of both major parties.
- In 2009, she was awarded the prestigious National Excellency In Accountability Award by the nonpartisan National State Auditors Association.
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In 2010, she was elected by her nonpartisan peers to lead the National State Auditors Association.
- She also served as a State Representative from the Stillwater area, and on the Forest Lake Area School Board.
- Rebecca and Shawn founded, built and sold a successful 50-employee business.
- Rebecca was CFO and President of the business for several years until she decided to work to make a difference in the community and became a public school teacher.
- Rebecca has also managed several of the Ottos' property management concerns.
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"Good policy is not about ideology. It's about people and community." - Rebecca Otto |
Community Volunteer
- Rebecca chaired a heavily fought but successful bi-partisan school levy campaign in Forest Lake, beating the Taxpayers League of MN, who worked to defeat it.
- Rebecca volunteered as a Big Sister.
- She coached soccer for Forest Lake schools.
- She was an officer on her area school's PTO board.
Environmentalist
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Rebecca as a volunteer trail guide |
- Rebecca and her family live in a passive solar, wind-powered, geothermal home she and her husband designed and built with their own hands.
- They host regular open houses and guest lecture on environmental design.
- The home has been toured by over 10,000 people as an example of green building, and has been featured in local and national publications.
- As a policy maker, Rebecca worked to protect fragile ecosystems, to limit brain-damaging mercury emissions, to understand the possible link between atrazine and mutation, to protect groundwater, to promote the further development of commercial wind power, and to ban the use of bladder, skin and lung cancer-causing arsenic-treated wood when building school playgrounds.
- Rebecca was honored by the National Women's History Project, alongside Hillary Clinton, Jane Goodall and Sally Ride, as a "woman taking the lead to save our planet."
- Rebecca taught life science and environmental science for 5 years.
- She drives and promotes hybrid cars because of their innovative efficiency and reduced emissions.
- She served on the board of the St Croix Scenic Coalition.
- She volunteered as a trail guide for Warner Nature Center.
- She was a volunteer in the Bluebird Recovery Program.
- A pond on the Ottos' land serves as one of Minnesota's walleye rearing ponds.
- Rebecca enjoys fishing and boating with her family in the summer, and encourages responsible resource use.
- As a teacher, Rebecca taught the critical importance of wildlife management through hunting.