Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui is currently serving her second term on the Cambridge City Council, and first as Mayor of Cambridge. Mayor Siddiqui immigrated to the United States from Karachi, Pakistan at the age of two, along with her parents and twin brother. She was raised in Cambridge affordable ...
Read moreMayor Sumbul Siddiqui is currently serving her second term on the Cambridge City Council, and first as Mayor of Cambridge. Mayor Siddiqui immigrated to the United States from Karachi, Pakistan at the age of two, along with her parents and twin brother. She was raised in Cambridge affordable housing at the Rindge Towers, and Roosevelt Towers. She attended Cambridge Public Schools, graduating from Cambridge Rindge and Latin. Mayor Siddiqui’s passion for local activism and service motivated her to co-found the Cambridge Youth Council, now in its 17th year, and she earned a Cambridge Peace and Justice Award in 2006 for her activism. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in Public Policy from Brown University, Mayor Siddiqui served as an AmeriCorps fellow at New Profit, a then Cambridge-based non-profit organization dedicated to improving social mobility for families. Upon earning her J.D. from Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law, she moved back east to practice as a legal aid attorney with Northeast Legal Aid, serving the communities of Lawrence, Lynn and Lowell, Massachusetts.
Throughout her time as a public servant, Mayor Siddiqui has advocated on behalf of the City’s most vulnerable, strived to create more affordable housing, and protect households under threat of displacement from facing eviction and homelessness. As a City Councillor last term, she chaired the Mayor’s Task Force on Tenant Displacement, increased funding to legal aid services and worked to strengthen regulations on condominium conversions. She was a member of nine Council committees, serving as Chair of the Economic Development & University Relations Committee, Co-Chair of the Housing Committee, and Co-Chair of the Human Services & Veterans Committee. Councillor Siddiqui worked to connect residents of all backgrounds to better employment opportunities by developing a Citywide Workforce Development Consortium and pushing to increase funding to our workforce development providers, moved to keep the City’s retail areas vibrant by developing a vacant storefront registration policy, promoted equitable access to education for Cambridge families by increasing scholarship funding for low-income children to attend high quality preschools and advancing the implementation of a Children’s Savings Account program alongside fellow Councillor Alanna Mallon, helping families build dedicated savings for post-secondary education. Siddiqui sponsored various community events, including Cambridge Digs DEEP, a series of Citywide forums and workshops on racial justice and an annual Cambridge Community Iftar during the month of Ramadan., and collaborated with resident advocates to clean up and revitalize the area around Jerry’s Pond, an environmental justice site in the North Cambridge neighborhood.
As Mayor, she plans to continue working to promote affordable housing and address the region’s broader affordability crisis. She looks forward to preserving the City’s existing expiring-use affordable housing, such as the Fresh Pond Apartments, continuing to put forth policies to improve the City’s workforce programs and reentry services, support small business owners and economic development, promote safe, clean and climate-resilient streets, parks and infrastructure, and make Cambridge a more equitable and civically engaged community.
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