Rochester, N.Y.'s Youngest and First Female Mayor

In July 2016, Lovely Warren visited the grave of famed suffragette Susan B. Anthony to deliver a thank-you note. Anthony is buried in Rochester, N.Y., where Warren is the first woman mayor as well as the youngest mayor in the modern era. Her note read, “Dear Susan B., we thought you might like to know that for the first time in history, a woman is running for president representing a major party. … Thank you for paving the way.”

More than a century after women's suffrage, Warren is working to pave the way for economic renewal in her city, which has suffered a significant poverty rate for decades. She has focused on loans to businesses owned by women and minorities, and on rebranding downtown as an “innovation zone” centered around technology. “We have the brainpower here to fix it,” Warren says. “No one is going to fix it for us. We’re doing that one neighborhood at a time.” 

The mayor has also been focused on crime and police transparency; in December, she proposed a Police Accountability Board that could investigate and subpoena members of the local force.

 

Read about the Women in Government program and the rest of the honorees.