Meet Berkeley Mayor Adena Ishii

In November 2024, Adena Ishii became the first Asian American and, at 34, the second youngest person ever elected mayor in Berkeley’s history. (Her predecessor, Jesse Arreguín, was 32.) She defeated veteran city council member and vice mayor Sophie Hahn by only 1,039 votes. Berkeleyside described Ishii’s victory as “an extraordinary leap, from being a relatively unknown civic organizer to becoming the city’s top public official.”

During her campaign, Ishii and her team visited more than 20,000 homes. She connected with voters by sharing her personal history, including her housing challenges while a college student. She also emphasized her experience as a consensus builder and promised to improve housing equity and accessibility, expand mental health services, and increase employment and volunteer opportunities. 

"Many of us want to see a kinder country, a better country, a more compassionate country — the first step toward that dream starts here at home,” Mayor Ishii said at her inauguration. “It's time to unite against the kind of forces in our country that threaten our values. It's time to come together as one and create an example: an example of what a progressive city can be in the 21st Century.”

At Arts & Culture Wednesday, June 3, at 7 p.m., Mayor Ishii, will review her first 18 months in what she calls the best job she’s ever had. She’ll discuss the challenges she’s facing from both the second Trump administration and thorny local issues, including a budget deficit estimated as high as $30 million. She’ll also take questions from the audience during an extended Q&A.

Tickets for the mayor’s talk are $5 for club members and students and $10 for non-members. 

The mayor continues to rank  housing and homelessness as a top priority. She has stressed, however, that affordable housing can take years to develop. “We’re doing so much work now to figure out where projects need support and how we can get funding specifically for affordable housing,” she recently told The Daily Californian. 

Mayor Ishii grew up in  Southern California, where her parents worked in the film industry. Her grandfather,  Chris K. Ishii, was an animator for Walt Disney and was incarcerated during World War II in two internment camps. But the mayor also has Berkeley roots: One of her grandmothers settled in Berkeley before the war and was accepted to UC Berkeley but never attended.

“Berkeley really called to me,” the mayor recalls. “I had a strong feeling this was where I was supposed to be.”

Ishii followed that instinct, first enrolling in Berkeley City College and then transferring to UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. After graduation, she worked for the Alameda County District Attorney's Office and then earned a law degree from Santa Clara University. After law school, she worked as a nonprofit education consultant and became the Director of Voter Services for the Berkeley/Albany/Emeryville chapter of the League of Women Voters. She served as chapter president from 2017-2019.

Although she ran for Berkeley mayor as an outsider, Ishii emphasized that she did not believe the city needed a “complete reset.” Instead, she said her goal was to improve “how we work with each other and how we interact with constituents and the people who live here.”

Is Mayor Ishii achieving her goals? Bring your questions and concerns — and invite your friends and neighbors — to our evening with her.