The Can-Do Mayor

There’s a clock on Adena Ishii’s office desk, placed so she can easily see it. It’s not your typical clock, ticking off minutes and hours. This one counts down days—the number Ishii has left in the first four-year term of her new job.

“It’s a reminder of how important each day is,” she says, “and the importance of staying focused on the issues that really matter.”

Ishii is the newly elected mayor of Berkeley, California, and at 34, she’s the youngest woman ever to hold the office—not to mention the first Asian American and woman of color. For many, Ishii’s win last November came as a surprise. She had never run for public office, and before she threw her hat in the ring, most people had never heard of her. Not only that, but she was up against two Berkeley City Council veterans. Still, Ishii never saw herself as an underdog. Instead, she simply put all her energy into running the best campaign she could. 

At a time when polarization and division in American society are at an all-time high, Ishii, who’s a Democrat, emphasizes nonpartisanship. She’s focused on problem-solving and getting things done—addressing practical, day-to-day issues that matter to Berkeley residents. Talking to her, the phrase “can-do” comes to mind. 

This get-it-done attitude took hold at an early age and has roots in family hardship. Ishii grew up in Agoura Hills in Southern California, and when she was eight, her father was diagnosed with early- onset dementia. Before long he was incapacitated, and Ishii’s mother had to return to work to support her three young daughters. Ishii, the middle child, took on the role of helper—assisting in caring for her younger sister and, when she was older, working to earn money. 

“I think that really shaped not only my worldview but also just how I operate generally,” Ishii says. “Having to be responsible for a lot of things is something I’m used to.” 

Berkeley or bust

Ishii made her first trip to Berkeley while still in high school. Her boyfriend at the time had been accepted to Cal, and she came up to visit during his orientation. Ishii says it was love at first sight. 

“I stepped foot on campus, and I had this clear sense that this was where I was supposed to be,” she recalls. 

After high school, she began attending community college—initially down in Southern California then later at Berkeley Community College, because she thought going to BCC would make it easier to transfer to Cal.  

If early life experiences had a big influence on Ishii, so too did her time as a community college student. It was while she was at BCC that she first got involved in politics. California’s 2009 budget contained deep cuts, and education was on the chopping block. Ishii began organizing her peers to attend rallies in Sacramento to protest the reductions, which had immediate repercussions for her and fellow students. 

“The budget cuts meant really long lines to see a counselor or to talk to someone about financial aid,” she says. “There were fewer classes, less support, and fewer resources available for students.” 

It was not lost on Ishii that community college students were usually under-resourced in the first place. Many, like her, were first-generation college students who were now left trying to navigate a system that was even less equipped to help them. 

The roadblocks for community college students became even more apparent to Ishii when she began exploring the process of transferring to Cal. She quickly found the available support woefully inadequate; she was, in fact, actively counseled against applying to Haas, the school she had already decided on. 

Ishii ignored her counselor’s advice and was accepted to Haas (the acceptance rate for transfer students hovers around 11%). She’d chosen Haas because she thought a business degree seemed like a smart choice that would give her some security. “Having a lot of resource constraints when I was growing up made me want to have something that was stable and practical,” she says. 

Beyond herself

At last, Ishii had arrived on the Berkeley campus. But she didn’t stop thinking about her community college peers and the arduous transfer process. So she and a friend started an organization, called the Transfer Service Community, to help students navigate the process of transferring to Cal. The program operated through UC Berkeley’s Public Service Center in partnership with BCC and was completely student led. Ishii, in other words, was running a nonprofit while carrying a full course load at Haas—and she was eagerly putting classroom learning into practice.

 “I would be in a comms class or a marketing class and think, ‘How could we apply it to reach out to more students?’” she says, recalling a lesson on the four “Ps” of marketing (product, price, place, and promotion) with professional faculty member Bill Fanning that proved useful. Ishii was particularly mindful of place and promotion when marketing events and resources to students with materials that they could connect with. “Applying that learning was super exciting.”

Erika Walker, senior vice dean for instruction at Haas, is not surprised that Ishii became a mayor at a young age. “Adena has always been on the path of being a public servant,” she says. 

Walker first got to know Ishii when she took her Diversity in the Workplace class, and Ishii later asked her to be a mentor. “We have so many incredible students that come through Haas,” Walker says, “but Adena stood out.” 

Although Ishii didn’t yet know what direction she would take, Walker remembers that she had a clear sense of purpose. “She knew she was going to be giving back in some capacity and trying to make change,” Walker says. “We talk about impact and ‘Beyond Yourself,’ and she really is always thinking about that.”

After graduating from Haas, Ishii stayed local and worked as a consultant for the League of Women Voters for Berkeley, Albany, and Emeryville. She’d been involved with the League since her BCC days, when she’d begun volunteering and going to events. 

“What appealed to me about the League was that it was really about civic engagement,” she says. “There was such an emphasis on education and empowering people to advocate for the systems and the things they wanted to see.” The League is also nonpartisan, which attracted her at a time when politics was becoming increasingly divisive. 

As a consultant, she was tasked with growing and diversifying the membership, goals that Ishii herself was eager to achieve. But after making a series of recommendations, she was frustrated to see many go unheeded, either due to an unwillingness or an inability to implement them. So in 2017, Ishii decided to run for president of the League herself. 

In what would be a forerunner of her mayoral run seven years later, she ran in a contested election and surprised everyone by winning with 60% of the vote. She was the youngest and the first person of color to serve as president of Berkeley, Albany, and Emeryville’s League in its 106-year history. 

The run for city hall

Ishii’s early successes led her to consider graduate work in either public policy or law. She chose law and earned her JD from Santa Clara University. 

A year after law school, in the spring of 2023, Ishii and a friend were discussing Berkeley’s 2024 mayoral race and who might run. The incumbent mayor, Jesse Arreguín, was running for state Senate, so the field was open. When her friend suggested that Ishii herself might want the job, Ishii brushed it off. 

“I honestly laughed at him when he said it,” she recalls. “I was surprised that he’d even thought about it, because it wasn’t something in my mind.”

The conversation planted a seed, however, and over the next several weeks she began giving the idea serious thought. That summer she put together an exploratory committee of colleagues, community leaders, and mentors. That Ishii was able to assemble such a committee says something about her penchant for community building, which has always been important to her. The group arrived at a unanimous decision: She should go for it. 

Although Ishii had never run for public office, she’d worked behind the scenes on other political campaigns, so she had a feel for what was needed, a lot of which was simply talking and listening to people—two things Ishii is good at. Ishii says her campaign knocked on more than 20,000 doors—thousands of those by Ishii herself. 

She campaigned on a core set of issues that were popular with most Berkeley residents: addressing housing and homelessness, public safety, and infrastructure. She talked a lot about the need for safe streets. Ishii herself was the victim of a mugging, and she went through a stretch of being unhoused before she got to Haas, so these issues are very real to her. But she also spoke about transparency and accountability, and she says people responded to her nonpartisan background and the fact that she’s not dogmatic. 

“If you say, ‘I’m focused just on this group of people or just on that group of people,’ then you’re missing a whole bunch of the population,” she says. “I really believe in our ability to move forward together as a society.”

For the people

Politics has never been theoretical for Ishii. Her early experiences made her particularly attuned to uneven playing fields and the countless difficulties many people face. Now, as mayor, she regularly recalls the conversations she had with people on their Berkeley doorsteps, listening to them talk about the things they care about. 

“I travel through the city all the time now, and I remember speaking with someone at this house about this issue, and with that person about something else,” she says. “It’s such an amazing privilege to have all those stories in my mind and to make those connections with people.”

It’s all part of Ishii’s ethos and mission to improve the lives around her. “My job is to serve the community. That’s something I think we’ve lost when it comes to talking about politicians,” she says. “People see them as celebrities, but the thing is, we’re public servants.”

And that’s exactly what the clock on her desk reminds her of, every day.