Wu, Michelle, 1985-

Michelle Wu (born January 14, 1985) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the mayor of Boston. The daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, she was the first Asian American woman to serve on the Boston City 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 63.94% of the vote, becoming the first woman, first person of color, and first Asian American elected to serve as Boston's mayor.

Born on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, she graduated from Barrington High School before moving to Boston to attend Harvard University, graduating in 2007. After college, Wu worked as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group. But when her mother became ill, she had to leave this job, moving back to Chicago to care for her mother and two youngest siblings. To support her family financially, she started a teahouse business. In 2009, she returned to Massachusetts to earn her J.D. from Harvard Law School. In 2010, Wu worked in Boston City Hall for Mayor Thomas Menino in the Office of Administration and Finance and later as a Rappaport Fellow in Law and Public Policy under Menino's chief of staff, Mitch Weiss. In her first semester at Harvard Law School, one of her professors was Elizabeth Warren. When Wu explained her family situation, a long friendship between the two women ensued. In 2012, Wu worked as the constituency director for Warren's 2012 campaign against Scott Brown. In this role, she coordinated outreach to all constituency groups, including communities of color, the LGBTQ+ community, veterans, and women. Wu is considered a protégé of Warren.

Wu was elected to the Boston City Council in November 2013 and re-elected three times. On the Boston City Council, Wu 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.

In September 2020, Wu announced her candidacy challenging incumbent Mayor Marty Walsh. After Walsh was nominated by President Joe Biden to be Secretary of Labor, Elizabeth Warren endorsed Wu for mayor. By September 2021, Wu was widely considered to be the front-runner in the nonpartisan primary election, with a significant polling lead; Wu placed first in the nonpartisan primary and advanced to the general election, where she faced Annissa Essaibi George. On November 2, 2021, Wu won the election and was sworn in and assumed office on November 16, 2021.