Andrea Jenkins is the first African-American openly trangender woman elected to public office in the United States.
After attending the University of Minnesota, Jenkins was hired by the Hennepin County government. She was a staff member on the Minneapolis City Council for 12 years before beginning as a curator of the Transgender Oral History Project at the University of Minnisota’s Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies. There, she curated the collection, noting that many of the materials within the collection tended to be focused on gay white men. Jenkins seeked to exapand the trans narratives in the collection and recorded oral histories from up to 300 individuals.
Jenkins has been serving since January 2018 on the Minneapolis City Council. Her campaign slogan was “Leadership. Access. Equity.”
Jenkins won with 70 percent of the vote.
Jenkins was elected Vice President of City Council shortly after her election and also serves as chair of the Race Equity Subcommittee, which helps to create a Racial Equity Community Advisory Committee made up of city residents.
At the age of 30, Jenkins began to outwardly present as a female.
Jenkins is one of the women who was featured on the January 29, 2018 edition of Time.