Chris Gearhart Cournoyer is the 48th Lieutenant Governor of Iowa. Before being appointed by Governor Kim Reynolds in December 2024, she represented Clinton, Jackson and Scott counties in the Iowa State Senate. She was first elected in 2018 and chaired the first Technology Committee. From this position, she authored and managed legislation that made Iowa the sixth state in the country to legally protect consumer data. She also served as Chair of the Education Budget Committee, Vice Chair of the State Government Committee, and a member of the Education, Natural Resources and Environment, Transportation, and Ways and Means Committees.
Governor Cournoyer has extensive experience in the technology sector and artificial intelligence. The daughter of an engineer and a teacher, she worked as a senior consultant in the technology department of Andersen Consulting, the Fortune 500 company that later became Accenture. After the birth of her first child, she left the corporate world to become an entrepreneur and founded a successful business as an independent website designer and developer. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science from the University of Texas.
Her entry into public service came when she was elected to her first of two terms on the local school board, which she subsequently served as president. As a member of the Governor’s STEM Advisory Council and a former member of the Quad Cities Engineering and Science Council, she is passionate about reaching underprivileged children through work-based learning and STEM education. As a robotics and coding teacher, she has maintained a personal connection to the classroom and remains an active substitute teacher in her community.
Lieutenant Governor Cournoyer is a former Scott County Reserve Sheriff’s Deputy, an avid local volunteer and proud mother of four children.
