• Office Sought: Representative, Illinois (6)
• Birth Date: March 31, 1954
• Web site: http://www.jillmorgenthaler.com

Education

• Army War College, MA
• Monterey Institute of International Studies, MA
• Penn State University, BA

Jill Morgenthaler was born in a Navy hospital in Pennsylvania. She would follow her father into the military.

Morgenthaler's Army career took her around the world, including to Iraq.

Morgenthaler served 30 years in the military - five years on active duty and the rest in the reserves - before retiring in 2006 as an Army reserve colonel. Besides Iraq, she also served in Bosnia, South Korea and Germany.

During her tour of duty in Iraq, Morgenthaler served as a military spokeswoman during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in 2004, when leaked photos showed U.S. soldiers posing with some detainees who were naked and in compromising conditions.

To run for Congress, Morgenthaler quit her job as Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's deputy chief of staff for public safety and homeland security adviser. She also worked for more than a dozen years at the Argonne National Laboratory in suburban Chicago in a variety of roles.

Morgenthaler holds three college degrees: a bachelor's from Penn State University and master's degrees from the Monterey (Calif.) Institute of International Studies and the Army War College.

She is married and has two children.