07/13/2026
We're excited to announce that Carmella Glenn, Vice President of the Madison Common Council, will keynote the 2026 Jumpstart Black Business Month Awards Dinner happening on August 20, 2026.
Carmella's path started far from a council dais. Her background is in Criminal Justice and Culinary Arts — an unusual pairing that became the foundation for everything she's built since. She put that combination to work as Director of Just Dane's Just Bakery, a workforce development program that trained formerly incarcerated individuals in culinary skills and gave them a real shot at employment. It was hands-on, high-stakes work: building something from scratch, proving it out, and watching people rebuild their lives through it.
That instinct — see a gap, build the thing that fills it — has carried through everything since. Carmella has spent over 20 years in community empowerment, violence prevention, and social justice work, eventually becoming a Certified Peer Specialist and a Violence Intervention Supervisor at Public Health Madison & Dane County. In April 2025, she took that same builder's mindset into public office, winning election as Alderperson for Madison's District 18, where she now serves on the Board of Parks, the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) committee, and the Alcohol License Review Committee.
What ties it all together is a founder's approach to public service: start with what's broken, build the system that should exist instead, and don't wait for permission. Carmella has been married for over 20 years and credits her family and community networks as the foundation that's made all of it possible.
