Sonia Chang-Díaz is the first Latina and first Asian-American elected to the Massachusetts State Senate and the first woman of color to ever make the ballot for Governor in state history.
As a leading progressive thinker and advocate for racial and economic justice, she’s spent her career crafting and winning transformational policy across education, economic growth, criminal justice, immigration, and LGBTQ rights.
Sonia’s family instilled in her the values of justice and equity and taught her the importance of taking action. Her mom was a social worker who helped women and children on the margins of society. Her dad came to America with $50 in his pocket — but with the help of teachers, lunch ladies, and librarians along the way, he became NASA’s first Latino astronaut.
Sonia wrote, championed, and won landmark education funding reforms to provide $1.5 billion in new aid to K-12 districts across the state. She led the charge for criminal justice reform and repealing racist sentencing rules, when Gov. Baker and Beacon Hill insiders were ready to look the other way. She also sponsored and won multiple protections for trans Bay Staters, negotiated a nation-leading police reform law, won increased assistance for small businesses and equity laws to close the racial wealth divide through emerging industries, strengthened environmental justice laws, won protections for immigrants, and helped pass voting rights expansions.
Prior to elected office, Sonia served as a public school teacher in the Lynn and Boston school systems, where she learned first-hand the challenges facing our public school students, teachers, and parents.
Sonia lives in Jamaica Plain with her husband and two children.