E. Denise Simmons, a lifelong resident of Cambridge, has been on the City Council since 2002 after starting civic life as executive director of the Cambridge Civic Unity Committee in the 1980s, then serving on the School Committee in the 1990s. In her …

Mallon grew up in Brockton, where her family experienced poverty and food insecurity but she benefited from “an activist municipal government and the social safety net programs it promoted.” She has lived in Cambridge with her husband and two children …

Tierney works full-time in state government as the research director and legal counsel for the Massachusetts Committee on Housing, where he works to create smart growth, affordable and middle-income housing opportunities and policies to improve public …

Levy, of Belgian descent, has been a Cambridge resident since 2003 and a neighborhood activist since 2006. A software engineer when he is not being “an activist for justice and Democracy,” Levy said he became a U.S. citizen a few years back specificall …

Born in Wellesley, incumbent city councillor Craig Kelley went to the University of Rochester on an NROTC scholarship. He made dean’s list, got a bachelor’s degree in history and won the NROTC leadership award. After college, Craig served in the Marine …

Lenke settled in Cambridge in 1968 and, with a small group of friends, launched the city’s first bricks-and-mortar food coop near Central Square while working as a home contractor and then as owner and manager of a moving company based near Fresh Pond. …

Harding is a lifelong Cantabrigian and Cambridge Rindge & Latin School graduate with a degree from Fitchburg State College. In addition to his work on the School Committee, he runs the Men of Color Health Initiative, is a program consultant to the …

Burgin grew up in Florida, where his family runs an agricultural business. He became interested in politics as a teen and later worked in the Florida state legislature and county commissioner’s office in Hillsborough County, Fla. While attending colleg …

Musgrave started her career interning for then-U.S. Sen. John Kerry, focusing on veterans’ issues. She serves on the executive board of Interise, a national nonprofit that tackles poverty and inequality by helping small businesses grow, has been a mana …

Born in Suriname, a small country in South America that is 90 percent Amazonian rainforest, a teenage Quinton Zondervan saw his country taken over by a dictatorship. His family fled to the United States, where he realized his dream of studying computer …