By Jessica Neal
“A typical day in my life requires a great deal of flexibility,” Jenn Gale, Orem City Council member, said.
From bouncing between appointments and meetings, caravanning kids through town and helping with the family business, Gale is always putting moving pieces together to get through her day.
“A non-negotiable for me is I have to get out and exercise every day or I go absolutely crazy and nobody wants to be around me,” Gale said.
None of her roles are completely flexible, “but they’re a little bit flexible, just enough that…when one thing is really busy, something else isn’t, and so it just sort of works.”
While her role on the council has added to her schedule, she’s used to the involvement in Orem. Gale has been involved in serving within the community for years with mountain bike coaching, swim coaching, advocating for the community to redo the Orem recreation center, and more.
Her community involvement started as her kids grew up in Orem. “I started getting involved in the things they were involved in,” Gale said.
A few years later, Gale went back to school and got a master’s degree in public administration from BYU. She had always planned on going back to school, but never knew what to study.
“I just didn’t know what I wanted to do because I could’ve studied 1000 different things and been happy,” Gale said.
Eventually, she realized that public administration was in the space she was already working in throughout Orem, so she thought it would lead her to more opportunities. After completing her master’s and continuing to work in the community, Gale got the idea to run for city council.
“I realized…I’m not loving the way this is going down, I think there’s probably a better way to do things,” Gale said.
While her path to city council seems linear, younger Jenn Gale never planned to be in politics.
Growing up in Southern California, Gale lived 15 minutes away from Disneyland and Newport Beach.
“It was a super, super fun place to grow up and I was at the beach a lot and my friends and I loved to be out in the sun, or we would go to Disneyland. I had an annual pass and it cost me $91 for the whole year with a few blackout dates and it was fabulous,” Gale said.
Gale grew up with two younger siblings. When she was nine, her six-year-old sister got hit by a car and was in the hospital for a year and a half. When she made it home, she was wheelchair-bound, unable to walk or talk and needed constant care.
“So I was the oldest kid, but it was just kind of a different life than most kids probably have, but it was a great life, it was just not what we expected, but so much of life is what we don’t expect,” Gale said.
She said she spent a lot of time helping take care of her sister as she grew up, moving her to prevent bed sores, feeding her through her gastrostomy tube, and helping with “infinitely many things.” She said that helping her sister was what she wanted to do, not something she had to do.
Gale also said that she learned a lot from her mom, who, after the accident, went back to school and started working to help pay down the medical bills.
“She had a great career, but it was just in a different order than somebody else’s career. So there are phases of life and it’s okay to not do things in the same order as everyone else…The reality is, things are absolutely going to work out,” Gale said.
She always thought she would end up back in Southern California, but after they graduated from BYU, her husband started a business researching healthcare technology, KLAS, in Utah, so they stayed and raised their family in the area, eventually moving from Provo to Orem.
Gale said that her experience as a mom has also taught her valuable lessons about leadership that she’s brought with her to city council.
“Being a mom helps you love better…(kids) help you learn flexibility and they help you learn patience…being a mom definitely prepares you for that side of things” Gale said.
Gale said she’s learned from every step in her career and life.
“If you’re doing it right, you’re learning wherever you go,” Gale said. “You sort of accumulate knowledge as you go.”
And Jenn Gale hopes to go everywhere. She said her bucket list and travel goals are infinite.
“My husband always says to me, ‘you’re trying to put 10 gallons in an 8-ounce cup.’ And it’s because there’s so much life to live, there are so many things to do and I just want to do all of it, I don’t want to miss anything,” Gale said.
She loves to read and write, and loves to enjoy the parks and great ice cream spots in Orem.
While Orem, or city council, aren’t where Gale expected herself to be, she’s grown to love her role in the community.
“Seeing the direct day-to-day impact that local government has has been so fun to me,” Gale said. “It takes so many people working behind the scenes…what it does is it provides this backdrop for families to go have experiences…you just see all this magic happening and this is our lives playing out in spaces that have been created for us by our staff.”
Gale’s not quite sure where the future will take her. “I think I just want to go where I’m most useful,” Gale said, but she’s eager to spend the next two years making Orem as great as it can be.