Huldah Momanyi re-elected to Minnesota House with huge margin: Lessons for Kenyan girls

I met her last year at Ogembo town. She had come to visit a children's home, Global Atlanta. No convoy. No noise. No bodyguards pushing people aside. She walked with simplicity. She talked with a down-to-earth accent, the kind that makes you forget she is a big person in America and remember she is a daughter of Nyamira. That is the first lesson I took home from Huldah Momanyi Hiltsley: greatness does not need to shout.

Huldah Momanyi was born in 1985 in Magombo, Nyamira County, to Philip and Tabitha Momanyi. She grew up like many of us grew up. A village girl. Fetching water. Going to school barefoot sometimes. Dreaming big dreams in a small place. At the age of nine, she moved to the United States to join her parents, who had migrated earlier. The family settled in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. She did not forget where she came from. That is why even today she still comes back to Ogembo, to visit children's homes, to sit with mothers, to listen to girls who remind her of herself.

Huldah did not allow migration to confuse her. She went to Bethel University in Minnesota and did what many would call impossible. She earned not one but three Bachelor's degrees, in International Business, International Relations and Reconciliation Studies. Then she went further and earned a Master's degree in Global Business Management from the same university. Before politics, she worked as a senior privacy analyst in the medical device industry. She also worked at Bethel University, at FEMA under the US Department of Homeland Security, and in community organisations. She served as president of Mwanyagetinge, an organisation supporting Kenyans in Minnesota. She is married to Bart Hiltsley and they have two children. Education opened the door. Character kept her inside.

In 2022, Huldah ran for the Minnesota State Senate, District 38. She lost. Many people would have given up there and gone home to cry. She did not. She went back, organised, listened and came back stronger. In 2024, she ran for the Minnesota House of Representatives, District 38A, covering southwestern Brooklyn Park and Osseo, on the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party ticket. She won the primary by only 50 votes, then won the general election with 64.78 per cent of the vote, beating Republican Brad Olson. She became the first Kenyan-American to serve in the Minnesota House.

On November 3, 2026, she did it again. She was re-elected with 71.8 per cent of the votes, 9,852 votes against 3,840 for her Republican challenger Charlie Kistler, to serve a second two-year term starting in January 2027. In the House, she serves on the Housing Finance and Policy, Human Services Finance and Policy, and Legacy Finance committees. Her agenda is simple: safety, equitable housing, accessible healthcare, fair education funding and economic opportunity for working families. Her earlier attempt at the Minnesota Senate seat taught her what every leader must learn: losing an election is not losing your calling.

This is where her story speaks directly to our girls. Some people still say the place of the girl child is in the kitchen. Cook. Marry early. Keep quiet. Do not dream too far. Huldah proves that lie wrong. The kitchen is not a prison. A girl can cook if she wants to, but she can also lead, legislate and change laws in a foreign parliament. She can be a mother and a Member of the House at the same time. She can be a wife and a policymaker at the same time. She can be from Magombo and sit in St Paul.

Through her organisation, SaniNaps, she provides sanitary napkins and school supplies to girls in rural Kenya. She knows what it means for a girl to miss school because she has no pads. She knows that keeping a girl in school is keeping a whole village alive.

So to our female learners, learn this. Your village is not your limit. Magombo produced a Minnesota legislator. Ogembo can produce the next one. Education is your passport. Three degrees did not make her proud; they made her prepared. Losing is not failing. She lost the Senate race in 2022, then won the House in 2024 and again in 2026. Simplicity is strength. She came to Ogembo without show. Humility travels further than pride. Do not wait to be invited. She did not wait for someone to give her a seat. She stood for it.

Huldah Momanyi did not become great because America made her great. She became great because she carried Nyamira inside her and carried America with respect. If a girl from our soil can go and make laws in Minnesota, then no girl in Kisii, Nyamira or anywhere in Kenya should be told her place is only in the kitchen. Her place is wherever her talent, her education and her courage take her: in the kitchen if she chooses, in the classroom, in business and in Parliament. That is the lesson.

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