Pramila Jayapal

Pramila Jayapal (born September 21, 1965) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative from WA's 7th congressional district since 2017.

A member of the Democratic Party, she represents most of Seattle, as well as some suburban areas of King County.

She immigrated to the U.S. in 1982, at age 16, to attend college.

She earned a BA from Georgetown University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Jayapal worked for PaineWebber as a financial analyst after graduating from college.

At PaineWebber, she began to work on development projects from Chicago to Thailand.

Later, she briefly worked in sales and marketing for a medical company before moving into the public sector in 1991.

Jayapal founded Hate Free Zone after the 2001 September 11 attacks as an advocacy group for immigrant groups.

Hate Free Zone registered new American citizens to vote and lobbied on immigration reform and related issues.

It successfully sued the Bush Administration's Immigration and Naturalization Services to prevent the deportation of over 4,000 Somalis across the country.

The group changed its name to OneAmerica in 2008.

Before entering electoral politics, Jayapal was a Seattle-based civil rights activist, serving until 2012 as the executive director of OneAmerica, a pro-immigrant advocacy group.

She founded the organization, originally called Hate Free Zone, after the September 11 attacks.

Jayapal stepped down from her leadership position in May 2012.

In 2013, she was recognized by the White House as a "Champion of Change".

After State Senator Adam Kline announced his retirement in early 2014, Jayapal entered the race to succeed him.

She was endorsed by Seattle Mayor Ed Murray and won more than 51% of the vote in the August 5 primary, out of a field of six candidates.

She defeated fellow Democrat Louis Watanabe in November.

In the Washington State Senate, Jayapal was the primary sponsor of SB 5863, which directs the Washington State Department of Transportation to administer a pre-apprenticeship program targeting women and people of color; the bill passed into law in July 2015.

She co-sponsored a bill to test and track thousands of police department rape kits.

Jayapal represented the 37th legislative district in the Washington State Senate from 2015 to 2017.

She is the first Indian-American woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The district's first female member of Congress, she is also the first Asian American to represent Washington at the federal level.

Jayapal endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders for President of the United States in the 2016 Democratic primaries.

In January 2016, Jayapal declared her candidacy for Congress in Washington's 7th congressional district, after Representative Jim McDermott announced his retirement.

In April, she was endorsed by Bernie Sanders.

On August 2, Jayapal finished first in the top-two primary, alongside state representative Brady Walkinshaw, also a Democrat.

This was the first time in the state's history that a federal seat was contested by two Democrats.

Both identified as progressive Democrats.

The 7th is the most Democratic district in the Pacific Northwest, and the seat was all but certain to stay in Democratic hands even if a Republican took the second spot in the primary.

In the final weeks of the race, Jayapal and her supporters contested claims from Walkinshaw that she had not advanced enough legislation.

Jayapal won the general election with 56% of the vote.

On June 29, 2018, Jayapal participated in Women Disobey and the sit-in at the Hart Senate Office Building to protest the Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" approach to illegal immigration.

The protest resulted in the arrest of over 500 people, including Jayapal.

She said she was "proud to have been arrested" for protesting the administration's "inhumane and cruel" policy.

Jayapal served on the Mayoral Advisory Committee that negotiated Seattle's $15 minimum wage and co-chaired the mayor's police chief search committee, which resulted in the unanimous selection of the city's first female police chief.

Jayapal co-chaired the Congressional Progressive Caucus from 2019 to 2021, henceforth serving as chair.

She serves on both the Judiciary Committee and Budget Committee.

Jayapal was born into a Tamil family in Chennai, India, to Maya Jayapal, a writer, and Jayapal Menon, a marketing professional.

She spent most of her childhood in Indonesia and Singapore.