MEET JUNE
A South Dakota for ALL — one neighbor at a time.
Meet June
June CopperStad has spent a decade showing up for District 15 — as a community health worker, patient advocate, NAACP leader, and neighbor. Here's her story.
Meet June
I arrived in Sioux Falls in 2015 with my dog, $200, and everything I owned in a 2001 Saturn.
I came to spend the winter with my dad — who moved here from Uganda decades before — and never left.
I waited tables at the spots you know on Phillips Avenue. I learned this city by serving it. And somewhere in there, I fell in love with it.
My mother-in-law — a nurse at Avera for over twenty years — helped me land my first full-time job. For the first time in my adult life I had health insurance. I could pay my bills. I could stop surviving and start thinking about what comes next. That shift changed everything. I’ve spent every year since trying to make sure other people can feel it too.
Where she comes from
I grew up in Kansas City, raised by a single mother. We moved a lot — in and out of my grandmother’s house, riding out the kind of instability that doesn’t make the news but shapes everything.
My grandmother had been redlined — told where she could and could not buy a home because of the color of her skin. She didn’t accept it. She organized. She showed up for her community anyway.
I am her granddaughter.
Her work in this community
I went back to school for Social Work and spent five years at Arise Youth Center walking alongside justice-involved youth — being a ride to court, a return phone call, a connection to a job or a food bank. Later, Midwest Street Medicine brought me to our unhoused neighbors, who turned out to be some of the most resilient, knowledgeable people I’ve ever met. They already knew what needed to change. My job was to listen and act.
Today, I own a small business — putting my advocacy experience to work for Sioux Falls. I serve on the Executive Board of the NAACP Sioux Falls Branch, chairing the Health and Housing Committees, and I advocate for housing rights and access.
I am fighting for the same things I’ve always fought for: a community that uplifts us all.
Why she’s running
I’m running because stable housing, accessible healthcare, steady work, and strong families aren’t policy abstractions to me.
They’re the difference between surviving and thriving. I’ve been on both sides of that line. And the people of District 15 deserve someone in Pierre who has actually been there.
About June
June CopperStad is a Social Work-educated Community Health Worker, Patient Advocate, NAACP leader, and 10-year resident of District 15.
She is the daughter of a single mother and a Ugandan immigrant — and the granddaughter of a woman who was redlined and organized anyway.
She has spent her career showing up for this community. Now she’s asking for the chance to do it in Pierre.