Michelle Wu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Wu

Michelle Wu (Chinese: 吳弭) is an American lawyer and politician who is a member of the Boston City Council and the mayor-elect of Boston. The daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, she is the first Asian American woman to serve on the council. She was first elected to the council in 2013 and served from 2014 to 2021, including a stint as council president from 2016 to 2018. Wu was a candidate in the 2021 Boston mayoral election and won with 62.4% of the vote, becoming the first woman, first person of color, and first Asian American to be directly elected as the mayor of Boston.

Wu is considered a political progressive and is a protégée of Elizabeth Warren. Warren was one of Wu's professors in law school, and Wu later worked on Warren's 2012 United States Senate campaign.

On the Boston City Council, Wu has authored a number of ordinances that have been enacted: preventing the city from contracting with health insurers that discriminate in their coverage against transgender individuals, protecting wetlands and supporting adaption to climate change, enacting a plastic bag ban, adopting Community Choice Aggregation, and providing for paid parental leave to municipal employees. She also pushed for a successful effort to put in place regulations on short-term rentals.

Wu has argued for reforming the city's permitting and zoning system, including abolishing the Boston Planning & Development Agency, which she argues is overly politicized and lacks transparency. She has also advocated fare-free public transportation and a municipal "Green New Deal" for Boston. Wu has spoken in favor of "demilitarizing" the Boston Police Department, and establishing an unarmed community safety crisis response system that would assume responsibility for nonviolent 9-1-1 calls.