2024
Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame
Honoree

Brooke Lierman was elected the 34th Comptroller of the state of Maryland in November of 2022, winning over 60 percent of the vote. She took office in January 2023, becoming the first woman to be hold this office and the first woman independently elected to any one of Maryland’s constitutional offices.

Ms. Lierman was born in Washington, D.C. She graduated from Walt Whitman High School in Montgomery County, Maryland, earned her bachelor’s degree in 2001 at Dartmouth College and her law degree in 2008 at The University of Texas at Austin.

Before entering law school, she served as an AmeriCorps VISTA member at The DREAM Program in Burlington, Vermont and worked as Special Assistant for National Security at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. She also worked as an organizer on several federal political campaigns, including for Senator Paul Wellstone. She practiced law for many years, focusing on civil rights and disability rights.

After law school, she and her husband moved to Fell’s Point in Baltimore, where she clerked for a federal judge prior to joining a law firm. She was active in her neighborhood, and after experiencing the problems of poor transit service first-hand, she became a supporter of better public transit in Baltimore City. In 2013, she was selected for Baltimore Magazine’s “40 Under 40.”  In 2014, she was selected as one of the Sun Magazine’s “50 Women to Watch” and received The Daily Record’s “Leading Women” award in 2015 and 2020. After the 2016 election, she co-founded Baltimore Women United, a women’s organizing entity that sponsored a women’s march for many years and served as an organizing entity for women to become more involved in politics. She was on the founding board of Emerge Maryland before leaving the board to join its first class in 2013.

She was twice elected as a member of the House of Delegates (2014 and 2018, both in which she was the top vote-getter), representing Baltimore City’s 46th District in the Maryland General Assembly for eight years. While in the House, she held leadership roles on both the Appropriations Committee and the Environment and Transportation Committee.
Additionally, she was the House Chair for the Joint Committee on Pensions, sat on the Joint Committee on Ending Homelessness, and founded the Maryland Transit Caucus.

She successfully passed landmark legislation to invest in and improve public transit and public schools; prohibit the suspension and expulsion of young students from public schools; grant college students the right to use their name, image, and likeness; fund evidence-based gun violence prevention programs; aid sex trafficking victims; close loopholes in affordable housing laws and create the office of statewide broadband.
Under her leadership, the Office of the Comptroller has adopted a vision to be a partner in creating a Maryland that is more equitable, more resilient, and more prosperous so that all Marylanders can reach their full potential.

She and her husband and two school-age children live in Baltimore City.

“I am truly honored to be inducted into the Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame and to join a group of women who have inspired me through their persistence, leadership, and resolve. Each of us builds on the work of those who come before us, and I am grateful for and inspired by the many women who helped make it possible for me to put more cracks into the world’s glass ceiling. When women do better, we all do better – and as our 34th Comptroller, I am focused on building a state that is more equitable, more resilient, and more prosperous for every Marylander. I am grateful to the Maryland Commission for Women and the Women Legislators of Maryland for this recognition, and I am committed to working for a world where all women have the opportunity to reach their full potential.” – Maryland Comptroller Brooke Lierman