Libby Schaaf

Background

About Libby Schaaf

Libby Schaaf served as Oakland’s 50th Mayor from 2015-2023. During her tenure, Oakland experienced its greatest housing building-boom this century, doubled affordable housing production, quadrupled interim housing for homeless, broke all-time records for repaving streets, and saw Oakland’s lowest 5-year period of gun violence. She is most proud of creating the Oakland Promise, deemed by experts “the most comprehensive cradle-to-career initiative in the nation,” closing the digital divide for students during Covid, and launching universal access to preschool in Oakland. In 2018, she was named to the “Politico 50” list of most influential people driving politics in America and shortlisted for the World Mayor Prize. She was the first woman elected Chair of California Big City Mayors. She Co-chaired the bipartisan Mayors & CEOs for Housing Investment and served in the US Delegations to the UN’s Habitat and COP27. Previously, she worked as an attorney, legislative aide, City Councilmember and Director of Public Affairs to the Port of Oakland. Schaaf holds a J.D. from Loyola Law School. Last year, Libby ran Emerge California, a program that recruits and trains Democratic women to run for political office, and held a Senior Fellowship with Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. She is currently a lecturer at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and is HUD Secretary Fudge's appointee to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission & Bay Area Housing Finance Authority. She serves on the boards of All Home, California Competes, The NorCal Coalition of College Promise Programs, and The Climate Migration Council and holds a Senior Fellowship with the Harvard Graduate School of Education for collective action.