Rep. Jacky Rosen directly addresses attacks by U.S. Sen. Dean Heller and the Republican groups who support him over her work as an independent consultant and her degree in computing in a new ad released Friday.

Rosen, who speaks straight into the camera for the duration of the 30-second ad, highlights her experience working as a waitress in college, being employed as a computer programmer and running what she describes as her “own independent consulting business.” The ad is a direct response to attacks by Heller and other groups over her characterization of her independent consulting work as having “built a business.”

The ad is running in Reno and is part of the campaign’s ongoing seven-figure television buy.

“I’m Jacky Rosen, and I’m proud of everything I’ve accomplished in my career,” Rosen says. “I worked my way through college as a waitress, became a computer programmer for some of Nevada’s biggest companies, then ran my own independent consulting business. With all that, Dean Heller says my business experience doesn’t count.”

One of Heller’s ads calls Rosen’s business “imaginary” because it had no employees, no business license and no name. Attack ads from the National Republican Senatorial Committee have made the same charge.

The details about Rosen’s consulting firm were first reported by the Reno Gazette-Journal, which found no evidence that the first-term congresswoman ever held a state or local business license. The story also noted that the city of Henderson does not keep business license records longer than a year after a business closes, and she wouldn’t have required a state license as long as she didn’t have any employees.

Rosen’s campaign has pushed back on the criticism, saying that she was referring to work that she did as an independent consultant between 1993 and 2002 for two main clients, Southwest Gas and Radiology Specialists.

Rosen also addresses her attacks on her degree in computing, which largely withered after she released a transcript showing she earned an associate’s of applied sciences in computing and information technology in 1985 from Clark County Community College, now the College of Southern Nevada.

In the ad, she says that Heller “manipulated” video footage to question her degree, referring to a truncated C-SPAN clip in one of his ads.

Rosen told C-SPAN that she “got a degree in psychology, and in computers, I actually learned how to, I’m a computer programmer, systems analyst by trade.” The Heller ad stops the clip after “computers.”