Ember Reichgott Junge headshot

Full Author Bio

Ember Reichgott Junge is the unlikely author of The Dance of Resilience. She’s a former eighteen-year Minnesota state senator, a nearly fifty-year business and nonprofit attorney and consultant, a long-time television political analyst, and a former executive of Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota.

She’s an amateur ballroom dancer who walked into a dance studio at the age of thirty-five for one reason: to find a husband. She found one, but he doesn’t dance. Dance changed her.

Ember is also a former journalist. During the pandemic, she started interviewing people who had transformed their lives through partner dance. The dancers’ passion and resilience shone through the interviews. Ember wanted others to learn about these experiences and the benefits of partner dance—hence, the authentic and personal stories within the book.

As a policy advocate, Ember also interviewed leaders in various health fields to shine a light on the physical, social, mental, and emotional benefits of dance and to make a case for including dance and the arts in the larger health care system.

This is Ember’s second book. Her first book, Zero Chance of Passage: The Pioneering Charter School Story, is a historical memoir of her roller-coaster journey as senate author of the first charter school law in the nation. In 2013, her book won Grand Prize for the Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards, among other awards. It was cited as an expert resource in a 2025 US Supreme Court case.

Ember lives in Minneapolis and is a graduate of St. Olaf College, Duke University Law School, and the University of St. Thomas MBA program. She is married to retired long-time McLeod County Attorney Michael Junge, who lives in Hutchinson. They commute between their homes with their miniature schnauzer, Maya.