After just one week in her new role, Riverside’s newest village clerk, Emily Stenzel, is already looking ahead to the village’s next quarter-century milestone after this year’s sesquicentennial.
“My whole goal with Riverside is, obviously, to be here for as long as I can. I’m committed to staying in Riverside,” she told the Landmark in an interview Thursday. “It’s done nothing but support me, both internally with staff and externally with the residents. Building relationships both ways has been a really great experience, and I look forward to being a part of Riverside’s legacy. We’ll see; maybe at the 175-year anniversary, I’ll be helping and thinking back to this moment at 150.”
Stenzel was appointed to the role at the village board’s Feb. 20 meeting following the departure of former Village Clerk Ethan Sowl two weeks earlier. Earlier in the month, she was also promoted to become a special assistant to administration and finance, a dual role Sowl held as well. Sowl was Riverside’s second full-time village clerk following former Clerk Cathy Haley, and Stenzel is the village’s third. Before Haley’s appointment in 2012, village clerks worked part-time without filling a second role.
Her salary this year is $84,275, the lowest amount on the pay scale for her position.
The new clerk first started at Riverside in May 2023 as a management intern. She was promoted to administrative assistant in December 2023, again to fiscal assistant in February 2024 and for a third time to management analyst in January before moving into her current roles.
Before working for Riverside, Stenzel earned a bachelor’s degree in 2020 from Illinois State University with a double major in history, legal studies and a minor in political science.
“When I was at ISU, I was a legal intern for the town of Normal” where the university is located, she said. “At the time, I wanted to be a paralegal, but I wanted to be in that municipal government realm.”
After graduating, she said she moved multiple times with her husband, who is an active-duty member of the military, which made it difficult to nail down full-time job that would last — until she took a pay cut to join the village.
“I actually was living in Riverside briefly at the time, and I saw that they were hiring for a management intern. It was a risky choice because I was making a little bit more money with a full-time job, but I was so desperate,” she said. “I really wanted to be in that municipal government realm because of the public service aspect. I was trying to find a role that felt fulfilling to me as a person and work that I could be proud to say that I was doing. I took that risk, and, obviously, it paid off incredibly well.”
After just a few months at the village, Stenzel said several colleagues recommended she pursue a master’s degree in public administration if she wanted to make a career in the field. Now, she’s set to graduate in May with such a degree from the University of Illinois Chicago; she said Village Manager Jessica Frances, a school alumna, even assisted her application by writing a letter of recommendation.
As an intern, “[Sowl] was actually overseeing me and giving me those different tasks, so I was working closely with him from the start, which is really great for my position now,” she said. “I got to learn a lot about what he [did] and was a backup for him, if he were away for vacation or things like that … so it worked out really well.”
She said several of the village’s iconic traits made her want to work there.
“I mean, you’ve seen it! It’s such a beautiful community, and not only by looks, but the historic nature of it,” she said. “Like I said, my undergrad was in history, so I nerd out for that kind of stuff. Having a community like Riverside, and its uniqueness and landmark status, is like icing on the cake of being in that municipal government role that I wanted to be in.”
But once she was there, Stenzel said Riverside’s closeknit administration appealed to her.
“Very briefly, I was in that legal department in town hall in Normal; however, it’s a bigger community, and their departments are so much more separate than in Riverside. Here, you really work with every department. You know all the faces and all the different departments,” she said.
Stenzel said that once Sowl announced his departure internally, she had to apply for the position just like external applicants, with cover letter, resume and all, to ensure a fair hiring process.
“The interview itself was with all of the department heads, as well as [Sowl]. It was a little daunting; we were in room four, where we normally do our village board meetings. It was actually set up that day [for a meeting], so there were cameras in there whenever I did my interview. Not that they were recording, but they were there,” she said. “The village clerk and special assistant to admin and finance does work so closely with all the departments, [so department heads] really all needed to be a part of it.”
In the week since she was appointed village clerk, Stenzel said the only downside has been doing double duty with her previous role of management analyst as Riverside hires a replacement.
“Other than that, I’m so ecstatic. I love the work I’ve been doing and getting to work more closely with [Frances], who is just a wealth of knowledge in the municipal field,” she said. “I was recently at a conference for the [Illinois City/County Management Association], and everyone was talking to me about, ‘Wow, you’re going to learn so much under Jessica.’ Really, already, in the small timeframe, I have, and I can’t wait to see how much further I’ll grow under her tutelage.”
She said the best part of her new job is getting to assist Riversiders directly.
“About 10 minutes before my interview — I was working that day, of course — my phone started ringing, and I thought, ‘Oh, I guess I could let this go to voicemail,’ because I [was] trying to prep and get ready to do this interview. But I [thought], ‘No, I’m going to answer this, because I’m going to be able to help this person, and it’s going to make me feel good, and I’m going to walk into this interview with a positive, happy attitude.’ Sure enough, that’s what happened,” she said. “Our residents care a lot, but in the best way, so I really have great interactions every time I’m helping.”
