She graduated from St. Mary's Academy and the Spencerian Business College, and later studied at the University of Wisconsin Extension in Milwaukee.
She worked as a schoolteacher, music teacher, bookkeeper, librarian, and newspaper writer, including as assistant manager and bookkeeper for the Milwaukee Polish language daily newspaper Nowiny Polskie from 1908 to 1922), while also serving as a housewife and mother of three children.
From 1921 to 1939 she was managing editor of the weekly newspaper Glos Polek ([Polish] Women's Voice) of the Zwiazek Polek w Ameryce (Fraternal Polish Women's Alliance of America); she had founded the St. Catherine Society, a local lodge of the Zwiazek, in 1912, and would remain its president until her death.
[3] In 1928, she unseated Republican State Representative Louis Polewczynski to represent the Eighth Milwaukee County district (the 8th and 14th wards of the City of Milwaukee), taking 3,889 votes to 2,659 for Socialist Nick Wroblewski and 2,239 for the incumbent Polewczynski.
She already had three grown children (Leo, Rose and Wanda) "through school and with jobs of their own" when first elected to the Assembly in 1928.