Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz Served 2009 - 2022 Democrat - Second Suffolk

Sonia Chang-Díaz is the first Latina elected to the Massachusetts State Senate. She is serving her sixth term on behalf of the Second Suffolk District, which is comprised of all or part of the Boston neighborhoods of Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Hyde Park, Mattapan, Mission Hill, Roslindale, Roxbury, and the South End. 

Senator Chang-Díaz is a thoughtful, honest, and tenacious champion for marginalized voices across the Commonwealth. A leading proponent of equitable, high quality education, Senator Chang-Díaz was a primary architect of the landmark Student Opportunity Act, signed into law in 2019. This watershed legislation doubles Massachusetts’ investment in achievement gap closure for our lowest-income students, implementing the recommendations of the 2015 bipartisan Foundation Budget Review Commission (co-chaired by Chang-Díaz). Fully implemented, it will infuse the commonwealth’s preK-12 schools with an additional $1.5 billion in resources per year. 
 
Since being sworn into office in 2009, Sen. Chang-Díaz has helped pass reforms to the state's CORI and criminal justice systems, curtailed the misuse of special education dollars, and been instrumental in the passage of civil rights protections for transgender Bay Staters. She has re-written our state laws on school discipline, successfully defended millions of dollars in funding for youth development, and helped craft nation-leading policy on equity in the cannabis industry. Additionally, she has been a voice for immigration, environmental, and housing justice and a champion for sound fiscal reform and good stewardship of taxpayer dollars. 
 
Senator Chang-Díaz serves as co-chair of the Senate’s Racial Justice Working Group and was one of the architects of the Reform Shift + Build Act, legislation to strengthen accountability and prioritize de-escalation in law enforcement. The bill passed the Senate in July of 2020. Sen. Chang-Díaz is the Senate Chair of the Joint Committee on Children, Families & Persons with Disabilities and the Joint Committee on Cannabis Policy. She also serves as a member of the Joint Committees on the Judiciary, Election Laws, Financial Services, and Public Safety & Homeland Security. 
 
Senator Chang-Díaz was raised on the idea that leadership, at its heart, is about service. It is a value deeply rooted in her family’s long tradition of public service. Chang-Díaz's mother raised her and her sister while dedicating her career to those most forgotten in our society: from adults with mental illness, to foster children in need of loving families, to at-risk toddlers and infants in Dorchester. Her father, an immigrant to the United States from Costa Rica, was our country’s first Latin American astronaut. Her sister is a teacher. And her grandfather has been recognized as one of the country’s most committed rural doctors. Prior to attaining elected office, Senator Chang-Díaz served as a public school teacher in the Lynn and Boston school systems, as Director of Outreach at the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, and as a key political adviser at the Barbara Lee Family Foundation. Senator Chang-Díaz currently resides in Jamaica Plain and is a parishioner at St. Mary of the Angels church in Roxbury.