Amanda Janoo

Amanda Janoo grew up in South Strafford with a father who worked as a civil engineer by day and washed dishes at night, and a mother who taught her to tend sheep, tap maple trees and mend clothes.¹ Her father had immigrated from Malaysia, and town meetings were part of her Vermont childhood.¹

Her working life eventually took her well beyond Vermont, into economic development projects with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, the African Development Bank and the German development agency GIZ.² She studied development at Cambridge and conducted Fulbright research in India with an organization representing women working in the informal economy.¹

Janoo later led economics and policy work for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance and helped establish its Vermont counterpart, promoting measures of economic success that include people’s health and living conditions.² Her work in Vermont has also included board service with the ACLU of Vermont and the advocacy organization Rights & Democracy.¹ She now rents in Burlington and says the cost of buying a home has put returning to her hometown beyond her reach.¹

Against Republican Governor Phil Scott, she proposes universal primary care financed partly through higher taxes on high earners and opposes his push for larger school districts.³ The race gives voters a concrete choice over whether to continue Scott’s education restructuring or preserve smaller community schools while adding services around them.³