Andrea Joy Campbell was first elected as the District 4 Boston city councilor in 2015, representing primarily the neighborhoods of Dorchester and Mattapan, as well as parts of Roslindale and Jamaica Plain. At the start of her second term in 2018, Campbell was unanimously elected Boston City Council president by her colleagues. She is the first African American woman to serve in this role.
On the Council, Campbell has established herself as an accessible, responsive and pragmatic leader. She began her first term by chairing and expanding the Council’s Committee on Public Safety to include criminal justice, was one of the lead sponsors of the Community Preservation Act, and, in 2017, secured the first-ever dedicated line item in Boston’s budget to specifically fund youth development programming. Campbell continues to focus on issues of public safety and criminal justice, affordable housing, and racial equity initiatives.
Born and raised in Boston, and educated in Boston Public Schools including Boston Latin School, Campbell went on to graduate from Princeton and the University of California-Los Angeles School of Law. She began her career at a nonprofit in Roxbury, providing free legal services to students and their parents on education matters, including school discipline and special education needs. She has worked as legal counsel in both the public and private sectors, and before embarking on her run for City Council, served as deputy legal counsel for former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.
She lives in Mattapan with her husband, Matthew, and their son, Alexander.