Meet Sara Knizhnik
Meet Sara Knizhnik - Your Voice for Lake County
Photo Credit: Susie Mason
Sara Knizhnik has a wide range of skills and experiences that she brings to the County Board, including her expertise in communications and messaging and her commitment to public service. In addition to serving as County Board Member, she is the Chair of the Gun Violence Prevention Initiative (GVPI) at the Lake County State’s Attorney’s Office.
Knizhnik has a BA from Northwestern University and an MA from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. She was a university teacher for 17 years before becoming a full-time, professional advocate for gun violence prevention and criminal justice reform in 2017.
As an elected Vernon Township Trustee, Knizhnik passed a resolution declaring 2022 a year devoted to educating Township residents on firearm safety. As a County Board Member, she led the effort to pass a resolution urging the Illinois General Assembly to pass a safe firearm storage bill.
Knizhnik believes that the challenge of governing effectively lies in balancing the need for fiscal responsibility with the need to provide services that improve people’s lives. Those services should prioritize public health and safety and should be equitably accessible to all.
As a Lake County Board member Sara supports the Board’s demonstrated commitment to being a responsible steward of Lake County funds. Knizhnik is also determined to find solutions to the climate crisis, inequities in criminal justice system and housing and food insecurity.
Sara and her husband Alex have been married for 25 years and have two children. Knizhnik says, “I am proud to be among the hundreds of dedicated public servants in Lake County and to contribute my skills and experience to my top priority: representing my constituents with integrity and the determination to make Lake County safer, fairer and more affordable.”
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January 2019 - Gun Dealer Licensing Signed Into Law
As the Organizer of the Illinois Gun Violence Prevention Coalition, Sara led a statewide movement of grassroots GVP activists in support of this crucial bill that holds bad apple gun dealers in IL accountable for selling guns to people who should not have them. GVP activists followed up this legislative success by passing three more gun safety bills into law later that year.
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2015-2018 - Moms Demand Action
In 2015, Sara founded the first Moms Demand Action for Gun Safety Local Group in the northern suburbs, a group that went on to play a crucial role in passing a range of gun safety bills in Illinois for the first time in a generation. Together, we built a movement in Lake County that not only helped make everyone in IL safer, we also helped elected gun safety candidates to the Lake County Board, the IL House and Senate and all four countywide races: Sheriff, State’s Attorney, Treasurer and Clerk.
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Summer 2019 - Light in the Night with the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago
Pre-pandemic, Sara spent her summers bringing gun violence prevention activists and gun violence prevention professionals - like those on staff at the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago - together to work for peace - in Chicago and all over the state.
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Sara Meets Her Hero - Congresswoman Gabby Giffords
In 2020, as Organizer of the IL Gun Violence Prevention Coalition, Sara was honored to be invited as a guest speaker at a fundraiser for soon-to-be Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. Senator Kelly is the husband of GVP champion and gun violence survivor, Gabby Giffords. Gabby was shot in the head in on January 8, 2011 but survived. She and her husband went on to found Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. She is widely credited for starting the modern gun violence prevention movement.
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Survivor Advocates Lead the Way
For more than 5 years, Sara has worked with gun violence survivor advocates like Millie Burgos, whose daughter, Alexandria Imani was killed by a stray bullet. Her murder remains unresolved. Millie and her husband Rafael fight tirelessly every day to advance gun safety legislation and other initiatives in support of peace. Like so many thousands of survivors across the country, they turn their pain into action to save others.
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December 2021
Sara with Igor Volksy, Founder of Guns Down America, and Po Murray, Chair and Founder of Newtown Action Alliance. At a protest outside the White House demanding that the Biden Administration do more to prioritize ending the gun violence crisis in America.