Liish Kozlowski is a Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party member of the Minnesota House of Representatives, representing District 8B. Kozlowski was first elected in November 2022, after defeating Duluth City Council President Arik Forsman in the DFL primary, and took office in January 2023, succeeding Jennifer Schultz, who did not seek re-election. Kozlowski won a second term in 2024. The district covers part of Duluth.1
Kozlowski was born in Duluth in 1988 and is of Ojibwe and Mexican descent, with family ties to the Grand Portage and Fond du Lac bands. Kozlowski, the first in the family to graduate from college, earned a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Minnesota Duluth in 2009 and a Master of Business Administration from the College of St. Scholastica in 2017. From 2019 to 2021 Kozlowski worked as community relations officer for the City of Duluth, where Kozlowski helped set up the state’s first reward fund for cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people.
Kozlowski is the first openly transgender nonbinary member of the Minnesota Legislature and identifies as two-spirit. In the current term Kozlowski serves as co-vice chair of the House Housing Finance and Policy Committee and is a member of the Workforce, Labor, and Economic Development Finance and Policy Committee and the Taxes Committee. During the first term Kozlowski sat on the capital investment and economic development panels and was co-vice chair of the labor and industry committee. Kozlowski has co-chaired the House People of Color and Indigenous Caucus. Policy priorities have included housing, child care, education funding, health care access and support for the state’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives Office.
