“But people who know me really well know that my grandmother has dementia and her dementia is worsening,” Madison said. “And so while I thought about running for council leadership the previous April, I decided not to do it because I wanted to spend more time with my grandmother while her memory was more intact than it is now. And I am glad that I did that because my grandmother went from still knowing who I was last year to now she may not altogether remember. I’m thankful that I made that decision. The council leadership election happened in April, so the six months leading up to April, I really began to plan to serve in a leadership role, so that I wasn’t coming in blindly.”

Madison is the founder of the Progress Center for Black Women and an organizational consultant. She is used to bringing people to the table.

“In all of my time in Madison, I’ve created spaces for people to be welcome, for people to be included, to learn, to educate, to make friends, and to meet your spouse to have your next child with,” Madison said. “I’ve created all kinds of spaces. And so, what I did like I would do in any other role, I met with every alder minus maybe 2-3 because our schedules conflicted. But I met with a majority of the alders to understand what they wanted in a leader, what has been going well and what has not been going well and could be improved. So I just took what I learned from each of those alders and shaped my leadership around how they wanted their leader to lead.”

Carmella Glenn was elected alder in April 2025 and because of the Common Council reorganikzing their elections so that there would be staggered terms and elections, Glenn ran again in April 2026 and won. She had a lot to do during that one year in between elections.

“My first year was great,” Glenn said. “There were a lot of learning curves. I took some pretty hard committee assignments because I knew that I was running again. I really wanted to learn and have my head down and really dug in. I was on the plan commission, board of parks and alcohol license review. I just really had my head down learning. Being an alder was not a part-time job.”

Glenn also took the time to get to know her district better.

“I have really dug into community a lot. I have some great relationships. I got to know communities, especially those that aren’t typically thought of. Through my previous role with Public Health, I got to know so many of the areas that have ever struggled. I really built my relationships around community. So whether it was Vera Court or Kennedy Heights, I’ve recently been doing some work over at Oak Park Terrace supporting them with some new management and digging into different things there. And then, I have had some early talks about a bid for Raemisch Farm. That’s the final plat to be approved. And it’s not in my district, but the Warner Park grand opening will be happening. I have spent this past year getting to know the people who are over here.”

Becoming vice-president was not an immediate goal of Glenn.

“I think typically it happens by people nominating themselves or declare their interest,” Glenn observed. “But Sabrina had asked me to run with her. I really wasn’t that interested at first because I was like, ‘I’m busy. I have a full-time career.’ But Sabrina wanted to work with me. If I was going to run this early, I wanted to work with someone whom I knew would be a really strong president. She talked me into it by talking my husband into talking me into it.”

As the council president, Madison is responsible for helping to maked the council efficient and effective.

“A couple key features of being the president of the Common Council are I lead the Common Council Executive Committee,” Madison said. “There are seven of us on this committee. I am basically shaping the Common Council executive agenda for the year. Some of what comes out of the executive committee is deciding which presentations may come to the council, things like cleaning up ordinances, for example. Some old things might need technical clean-up, perhaps a misspelling or something is outdated for example.”

It also means team building with the other alders.

“It means planning opportunities for alders to receive training,” Madison said. “Also there is relationship building. We try to do a bit of that. For example, in my one-on-ones with alders leading up to the leadership election, I learned that the mentorship model wasn’t really working for most. And there really wasn’t much coming out of it. I’ve always learned well in groups. I’m very nerdy, so I learn well in lecture kinds of spaces. And so what I decided to do was try something that has worked very well for me, which is a leadership pod. Instead of pairing the alders in mentorship roles, I paired them in pods so that they could learn from each other. Someone who has a couple of terms versus a newer alder. We not only created leadership pods, but also created learning targets for each pod that we would do collectively. So for example, one of the learning targets is for folks to meet with out IT department to help manage their email and learn some tricks. I know that I did not come out of the Outlook world. I came out of Google. My day to day is Google. I needed to learn tricks to better manage our constituent email because we get tons of emails. We’re making sure that we are running smoothly. We have the education and resources that we need to do our roles. And we have opportunities to learn to really make the city run a bit smoother.”

And as president, Madison is the point person for the council in working with Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway.

“I see the relationship between the mayor and I as an extension of the relationship we already have,” Madison said. “We just talk more frequently. It may be just talking about issues facing the city. We get some federal updates from the mayor’s office. We may talk about what lobbying efforts may look like going into the next budget year. We just have more conversations, to be honest with you. It’s just whatever serious issues may be facing the city, we’re probably just having more conversations about it sooner rather than a few days later.”

And as president of the council, Madison becomes acting mayor if Rhodes-Conway is out of town.

“I’m actually acting mayor right now,” Madison said as we sat in a coffeehouse. “She’s in Germany for 10 days. I don’t know how many times I’ve done it now. This is the fifth or sixth time. But this is the longest that I’ve done it.”

As acting mayor, Madison’s main responsibility is to take care of items that need attending to while the mayor is away.

“One of the most exciting things that I’ve had to do is I was at a meeting at a coffeehouse on the lower side of E. Washington Ave,” Madison recalled. “There was a document that needed to be signed pretty quickly, a real estate document. So someone from the city came to meet me so I could sign the document. I had to sign something else an hour or so later at a different coffeehouse. It’s about staying aware. I lean on my phone. We get notifications about some emergency that may have happened in the city like a shooting or a pretty tragic action, things like that. It’s just being in touch and staying up-to-date.”

Next Issue: More Roles and Issues