Meet the first woman elected mayor of Boston

Michelle Wu is Boston's first woman and first person of color elected mayor.

VIEW IN BROWSER | SUBSCRIBE     CLOSING THE GAP Thursday, November 4, 2021 This week, CNBC Make It work reporter Morgan Smith explores the historic election of Boston Mayor-elect Michelle Wu. You can follow Morgan on Twitter @thewordsmithm.   This week, Michelle Wu, 36, broke Boston's 200-year pattern of only electing white men for mayor. Wu, the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, is not only the first woman elected to serve in the city's top office, but also the first person of color. Boston's acting mayor, Kim Janey, became Boston's first Black female mayor in March after Marty Walsh resigned to serve as President Joe Biden's Labor secretary.    Throughout the campaign Wu proposed policies designed to tackle the city's racial wealth gap and climate change, including rent stabilization, free public transit and a "city-level Green New Deal agenda" that would invest in clean energy sources and plant more trees, among other initiatives.    This isn't the first glass ceiling Wu has broken. In 2013, when she was first elected to Boston's City Council, she was the first Asian American woman to serve as city councilman and from January 2016 to January 2018 she served as the council's first woman of color president.   The Chicago native told CNBC Make It in an interview last year that growing up she never thought she would have a career in politics. "My parents came to this country with nothing in their pockets and not speaking English and all of us kids were supposed to grow up and just get a stable job that kept us out of trouble," she said.    That all changed, however, when she was working her first job as a consultant in Boston after graduating from Harvard. One of her sisters called her and asked that she come home right away, as their mother was struggling with a very serious mental illness and their family needed help. "In the depths of her mental health crisis, I was 22 or 23 years old and had to start raising my sisters and become the caregiver for my mom as well," Wu said.  "So, in that moment, I went from being someone who had been actively pushed away from ever thinking about politics and government to then having to deal with the structures and systems of the government over and over again in our daily lives and in our struggles against it— whether it was trying to care for my sisters and get them into the right school placements or get my mom health care for her situation."   Wu, who eventually moved her mom and sisters with her to Boston, attended Harvard Law School. In 2012, she got her start in politics when her then-law school professor Elizabeth Warren ran for Senate. "By my third year of law school, [Warren] was running for the United States Senate," Wu said. "And, I just showed up to office hours and asked how I could help."   In her victory speech, Wu mentioned that one of her sons asked her if "sons can be elected mayor of Boston." "They have been, and they will someday again, but not tonight," she said. "On this day, Boston elected your mom because from every corner of our city, Boston has spoken."   What topics would you like to hear more about from Closing the Gap? Share your thoughts with us at askmakeit@cnbc.com  More articles from Closing the Gap Pittsburgh, Portland first in U.S. to provide workers with bereavement leave for pregnancy loss Though pregnancy loss is "extremely common," per the Kaiser Family Foundation, bereavement leave that covers miscarriage, stillbirth and termination is still rare. Recently, Portland, Oregon, and Pittsburgh have passed bereavement leave policies for city employees that cover all types of pregnancy loss, including abortion. 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But despite her success, she tells Make It's Jade Scipioni she still gets her ideas shot down by engineers, suppliers and R&D labs. Mangano shares her best tips for entrepreneurship and how to maximize your opportunities for success.  Read More Unsubscribe Manage Newsletters Digital Products   Feedback Terms of Service Privacy Policy   © 2021 CNBC LLC. All rights reserved. A property of NBC Universal. 900 Sylvan Avenue, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632 Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes. Global Business and Financial News, Stock Quotes and Market Data and Analysis. Data also provided by THOMSON REUTERS