Senator Mary Washington – Speaker
Baltimore City – Senator
Maryland General Assembly
Senator Mary Washington has spent over 20 years working for Maryland’s 43rd District as a legislator, advocate, and student of public policy.
In 2010, she made history when she became the first openly LGBT African-American elected official in Maryland – and only the second such state legislator in the country. In her seven-plus years in the House of Delegates since, she has distinguished herself as a leader fighting for affordable access to water, protecting families at risk of losing their homes to unfair tax sales and foreclosures, making sure Baltimore city schools get the fair and equitable funding they deserve and helping unaccompanied homeless youth get the services and support they need.
After serving on both the House Appropriations Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee, Senator Washington won the trust of her colleagues and constituents as an expert and a leader on budget and tax issues and on the impact of those funding choices on families across Maryland.
Born in Philadelphia, Mary Washington began her professional career teaching at a Catholic elementary school. Her dedication to serving at-risk students and drive to understand the needs of urban communities brought her to Baltimore to study sociology at Johns Hopkins University. She earned her PhD from Johns Hopkins in 1997, then taught sociology at Lehigh University before taking a post-doctoral fellowship at the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
While a Delegate, Senator Washington served as House Chair of the Joint Committee on Homelessness and as a member of the Joint Committee on Children Youth and Families, the Regional Revitalization Task Force, and the Tax Credit Evaluation Committee. She served as Deputy Majority Whip in 2015-16 and on the Unaccompanied Homeless Youth Task Force in 2013-14. Today Senator Washington is a member of Women Legislators of Maryland and the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland and an Associate Member of the Latino Legislative Caucus.Senator Washington, a member of the part-time faculty at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) teaches public policy and sociology courses.
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