Sharon (Schuster) Bulova was born on December 6, 1947 to Mary and Lawrence K. Schuster Sr. in Pikesville, Maryland. At age 18, she married Richard T. Bulova and moved to Northern Virginia in 1966. In 1971, the couple moved to Kings Park West where she served two terms as president of the Kings Park West Civic Association. As president she became acquainted with Annandale District Supervisor Audrey Moore who hired her as a legislative staff aide in 1984.

In 1987, when Supervisor Moore left to successfully win a seat as Chairman of the Board of Supervisors, Bulova decided to run for Moore’s vacated seat. Bulova defeated Republican Patrick Mullins and went on to win re-election in the newly renamed Braddock District in 1991, 1995, 1999, 2003, and 2007. Bulova ran for Chairman of the Board of Supervisors in a special election on February 3, 2009 and won. Fairfax County residents re-elected her again in 2011 and 2015. On December 6, 2018, Bulova decided to not run for re-election and continued to lead the board until her term expired in December 2019.

During her eleven years as Chairman, Bulova guided the county through the Great Recession, ushered in new land use plans, welcomed Metro’s Silver Line to Tysons and Reston, updated the county’s environmental vision and created the Joint Environmental Task Force (JET), reduced homelessness by nearly fifty percent, re-engineered police policies and practices, and established a social and racial equity policy called One Fairfax.