Michelle Wu

Michelle Wu (born January 14, 1985) is an American politician serving as the mayor of Boston, Massachusetts, since 2021.

Michelle Wu was born on January 14, 1985, in the South Side of Chicago, Illinois to Taiwanese American parents.

Her father, Han Wu, was admitted to the Illinois Institute of Technology for graduate studies; however, neither he nor his wife spoke much English.

Raised with Mandarin Chinese as a first language, Wu often interpreted between English and Mandarin for her parents.

Her parents later were divorced.

One of four children, Wu was graduated from Barrington High School in 2003 as the valedictorian of her class.

Wu received perfect scores on the SAT and ACT and in 2003 was selected as a Presidential Scholar from Illinois.

Wu's parents hoped that she would pursue a career in medicine so that she would have financial stability.

Wu moved to the Boston area to attend Harvard University, from which she was graduated in 2007 with a Bachelor of Arts in economics.

After graduation, Wu worked as a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group.

When her mother began to suffer from mental illness, Wu resigned, moving back to Chicago to care for her mother and two youngest siblings.

To support her family financially, Wu started a teahouse business in the North Center neighborhood of Chicago.

In 2009, she returned to Massachusetts with her mother and youngest siblings to earn her J.D. from Harvard Law School, from which she graduated in 2012.

In 2010, Wu worked in Boston City Hall for Mayor Thomas Menino in the Office of Administration and Finance and later as a Fellow at the Rappaport Center for Law and Public Policy under Menino's chief of staff, Mitch Weiss.

In this position, she both designed a streamlined process for restaurants to receive licenses and established a food truck program.

Also in 2010, Wu graduated from Emerge Massachusetts, a training program for women who aspire to elected office.

The following year, she worked at the Boston Medical Center-based Medical Legal Partnership, where she provided legal services to low-income patients.

In her first semester at Harvard Law School, one of her professors was Elizabeth Warren.

After Wu explained her family's situation, a long friendship developed between the two women.

Warren stated, “Michelle was doing something in law school that, in 25 years of teaching, I never knew another student to be doing.”

Warren was one of Wu's professors in law school and Wu worked on Warren's 2012 United States Senate campaign.

In 2012, Wu worked as the constituency director for Warren's successful senatorial campaign against Scott Brown.

In this position, Wu coördinated outreach to all constituency groups, including communities of color, the LGBT community, veterans, and women.

Wu is considered a protégée of Warren.

Multiple sources

The daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, she was the first Asian American woman to serve on the Boston City Council, from 2014 to 2021, and acted as its president from 2016–2018.

She is the first woman and first non-white person to have been elected mayor of Boston.

Wu is a member of the Democratic Party.

While on the Boston City Council, Wu authored several ordinances that were enacted.

This included an ordinance to prevent the city from contracting with health insurers that discriminate in their coverage against transgender individuals.

She also authored ordinances to have the city protect wetlands, support adaption to climate change, enact a plastic bag ban, adopt Community Choice Aggregation, and provide paid parental leave to municipal employees.

As a city councilor, Wu also partook in a successful effort to adopt regulations on short-term rentals.

During her mayoralty, Wu was an advocate for a municipal "Green New Deal" (the Boston Green New Deal) and signed an ordinance to divest city investments from companies that derive more than 15 percent of their revenue from fossil fuels, tobacco products, or prison facilities.

She also has announced plans for the city to spend $2 billion on school construction projects as part of a "Green New Deal" for the city's public schools.

As mayor, she has also taken actions related to increasing affordable housing in the city and taken actions related to the city's COVID-19 policies.

A supporter of fare-free public transportation, Wu has funded a pilot program of fare-free service on three MBTA bus routes, expanding on a single-route pilot program that had previously been started under Kim Janey's preceding acting mayoralty.

Wu is considered a political progressive and a protégé of Elizabeth Warren.

Wu, a Democrat, became a member of the Boston City Council in January 2014.

Wu was the first Asian American woman to serve on the council, and only the second Asian American member to serve on the council.

In late 2014, Wu became the first city councilor in Boston history to give birth while serving on the Boston City Council.