Who is Deb Shinder?
You can find Deb's qualifications and credentials relevant to service on the city council listed on the Résumé page. This page is about Deb Shinder as a person – wife, mom, pet mom, former public sector employee, business owner, writer, traveler, and proud citizen of the State of Texas and the City of Rowlett.
Here's Deb's story in her own words:
Personal/Family Life and History
I’m an only child, and I was born and raised in Dallas by two of the best parents in the world. They’re both gone now, and I still miss them every day. My dad worked for thirty-two years for the City of Dallas, as did several of my uncles. Municipal government runs in the family, and maybe that's why I eventually ended up where I am.
The wonder years
As a child, I was a voracious reader, a.k.a. "bookworm" (and still am today). I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to be when I grew up - there were so many intriguing choices. My first dream - which I later realized, albeit not in the same way I imagined it then - was to make a living as a published author. Regardless of what else I was doing, I was always a prolific writer, and that was long before social media came along.
I graduated from Skyline High School in Dallas, when it was the brand new shiny first magnet school in the nation. I was in the English/Journalism cluster and was an editor of the school newspaper and literary magazine.
The 20somethings
I married my high school sweetheart, as girls of my generation tended to do, and followed my husband to California. There I attended the University of Southern California. Woodward and Bernstein were my heroes back then; I loved digging out information, so I was going to be an investigative reporter.
I knew a little Yiddish back then, and soon learned the accuracy of the saying, "Der Mensch Tracht, Un Gott Lacht." Man (or woman) plans, and God laughs. Life happened to me. My too-young marriage fell apart quickly, and I was left raising a beautiful baby girl as a single mom.
I might have been a dreamer, but I was also a pragmatist, and I knew I needed a paying job before I hit the best seller list. I had always been fascinated by law, so I enrolled in a paralegal program as what was supposed to be the first step toward law school. I got as far as taking the LSAT but then I got married again, found myself with a little boy to go with the girl, and had to revise my roadmap once again (or as my GPS says, "rerouting").
However, that paralegal training and experience was (along with my scintillating personality, I suppose) what got me my first position in municipal government and started me on this amazing career journey, with its unexpected but always interesting detours. My first summer job was as a copy runner for the now-defunct Dallas Times Herald. Probably the most unusual work I did was when I spent six months as a midwife’s assistant and attended quite a few births, even delivering a few babies on my own.
But this page is about the personal side, so I won't go into details about that now.
The thorny thirties
The second marriage lasted longer than the first, but I found that the nice guy whose name I'd taken wasn't nearly so nice when he was drinking. The problem was that after a couple of years, he was always drinking, and eventually I realized that he was an alcoholic. I was supporting the family while he was supporting an addiction that led him down a painful path and ended up literally killing him.
After that second disastrous go-round, I (thought I) was finished with marriage. For five years I dedicated myself to my kids and my work. I enjoyed my time on the Seagoville council, I liked being "one of the guys" at the PD, and I loved teaching at the academy. The latter is what I was doing when I met my husband, Thomas Shinder, M.D. (Tom) online.
I was an "early adopter" of technology. I was the first on my block to have a home computer, and when the online services became available to the general public, I tried them all: Prodigy, CompuServe, and America Online.
I was decidedly not looking for a romantic relationship when I stumbled across Tom in a chat room. I lived here in DFW, and he was practicing medicine in another state. When he told me he was a doctor, I was skeptical, but I used my investigative skills to verify that claim, and we spent a lot of time (and money) exchanging messages.
The turning point was when my mom got sick and he flew down to Texas to visit her in the hospital. A month or two later, he took me to New Orleans for my birthday. Love blossomed and grew. Most of the people I knew weren’t familiar with the Internet back then, and my family and friends were shocked when we got married a few days before Christmas in 1994. Some of them said it wouldn't last. To be perfectly honest, I had my doubts, too, but I decided to gamble that the third time would be a charm. I guess it was. We celebrated our 30th anniversary this past year.
The rest of the story
Tom and I have been through some ups and downs, but we've lived, learned, and grown together. We were there for each other through our mid-life career changes to IT from medicine and law enforcement, respectively, through the deaths of our parents, through crises of faith. We celebrated the good times and comforted one another during the bad ones.
We're very different but our personalities complement each other. We have disagreements but we share core beliefs. We've both changed over time, but those changes have brought us closer. We share a love of cats and dogs and all kinds of creatures and critters. We're in a good place now, in more ways than one.
Our good place is here on Ray Hubbard. We lived in Rockwall for a while but moved back to Seagoville to take care of my mom after my dad passed away. We bought a house there and built our consulting business together, but we always wanted to come back to the lake. When mom died in 2002, we started looking, and we found our beautiful house in Rowlett in 2004 and made it a home.
Somewhere along the way, my kids became our kids. By the time we moved here, they were grown up and gone. My daughter joined the Navy at 21 and retired after putting in 20 years of service. She and her husband, who still serves, live in Washington. My son works in the international chess world. He's "second" to one of the top players in the world. He's based in Colorado now but travels all over the world for tournaments.
I love them and wish they lived closer, but I'm proud of them for building successful careers and living their best lives.
After moving to Rowlett, Tom and I wrote a number of books together that became popular in tech circles. We were both recruited by Microsoft. Tom took the job and entered the corporate environment. I continued to work for myself, wrote books on my own, and got more and more involved in the community. I served as president of our HOA for a few years, got to know city leaders and attended council meetings, and was appointed to ad hoc boards such as the bond committee and charter commission. Later I served on the Board of Adjustment and then the Planning and Zoning Commission.
Broadening my horizons
During those years of self-employment, I took advantage of the flexible schedule to travel all over the world. Sometimes alone, sometimes with Tom, sometimes with other family members and friends, I saw much of Europe, a little of the Middle East, Central and South America. I cruised in the Caribbean and Alaska and was preparing for a trip to Japan in the summer of 2020 - then COVID came and changed all our lives.
During the pandemic shutdown, my perspective changed again. It was the worst of times, but in some ways, it was the best of times. Life slowed down, forced us to stay put, and gave us time to rethink what we were doing with our lives.
My eyes were opened to what I already knew but rarely acknowledged: just how much power government has over our lives and how important it is for those entrusted with that power to use it wisely. I gained a greater appreciation of all that I have here at home and the importance of being involved again in what’s going on here in my city. Those revelations led me to my decision to run for city council.
No regrets
I can honestly say that the decision to run for Rowlett City Council, which I made in June 2021, and which came to fruition over two years ago in the May 2022 election, was one of the best decisions of my life. Don't get me wrong: it hasn't been a bed of roses every moment. It's a lot of work and a big responsibility. It can be frustrating and exhausting. But it is also one of the most gratifying jobs I've ever done.
The reasons I'm happy that I was elected to the council are three-fold:
- I get to be a part of a hard-working team that has accomplished a lot. I list some of those on the page titled Accomplishments. We don't all have the same vision and we haven't always agreed on the "what" and the "how," but despite the challenges - or maybe because of them - we have worked together to overcome our differences of opinion and to put the interests of our citizens first.
- I get to make valuable contacts throughout the region and state. I've had the honor of representing our city in other venues and bringing my own unique perspective - as a councilmember but also as a former employee and senior council-appointed official and as a member of multiple boards and commissions - to the table with elected officials from all over Texas.
- Most important, though, I get to meet and get to know so many of the citizens of our city and address their questions and concerns on many different issues. I haven't been able to please everyone on every item that has come before the council - that would be impossible - but I have tried my best to balance the needs, desires, and rights of the members of the very diverse population that makes up our city.
I recently reconnected with someone I hadn't seen in a while. He asked what I'd been doing, and I replied, "mostly meetings, meetings, and more meetings." His response was "And you love it."
Yes. Yes, I do. I love the formal council meetings, the informal work sessions, the meetings of subcommittees and boards and local, regional, and state organizations. I love the one-to-one meetings with the city manager, the meetings with the city attorney, with people who want to bring businesses in, but most of all, the meetings with you, my constituents - whether individually or in groups.
I love listening to what's going on in your life, how the city's policies and processes affect you, and I especially love it when I can do something to help. I love being able to make a difference.
Another fork in the road
As 2024 turned into 2025 and the end of my three-year term on the council came into sight, I knew I was standing at another crossroads, and I had decision to make. Just like back in high school, there were too many intriguing choices. I'll talk about those, and why I made the choice I made, in the Issues section on the page titled The Role of Mayor.
Meanwhile, I love Rowlett, and I love the people I have met and gotten to know - both those who support my candidacy and those who don't - while serving on the city council. I believe we learn something from every person we meet. Thank you for all the learning experiences!
