Michelle Wu

Michelle Wu (born January 14, 1985) is an American lawyer and politician who has been the mayor of Boston since 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, she is one of the youngest mayors in the city's history, and is the first woman and the first Asian American to be elected to the office. The daughter of Taiwanese American immigrants, Wu graduated with honors from Harvard University and Harvard Law School. From 2014 to 2021, she was the first Asian-American woman to serve on the Boston City Council and was its president from 2016 to 2018. 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 people. She also authored ordinances to have the city protect wetlands, support adaptation to climate change, enact a plastic bag ban, adopt Community Choice Aggregation, and provide paid parental leave to municipal employees. As a city councillor, Wu also partook in a successful effort to adopt regulations on short-term rentals. Wu was elected mayor in 2021. During her mayoralty, Wu has addressed climate change and other concerns through 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% of their revenue from fossil fuels, tobacco products, or prison facilities. 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 succeeded in using contract negotiations with the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association as a means to create significant reforms related to police accountability. The union later endorsed Wu for re-election, the first time they had endorsed a mayor's re-election in more than three decades. She also emerged as a prominent opponent of the second Trump administration, with the Trump administration targeting the city over the Boston Trust Act. During her first term, Boston experienced a substantial reduction in gun violence and murders that resulted in multiple record-low years. She was re-elected to a second mayoral term in November 2025.

Photo: Joshua Qualls (Governor's Press Office), Public domain via Wikimedia Commons