Sumbul Siddiqui
[14] Siddiqui also co-founded the Cambridge Youth Council in 2002, which still exists in the city today and has led to many initiatives by student activists.In October 2018, Councillor Siddiqui sponsored numerous community events, including Cambridge Digs DEEP, a series of Citywide forums on racial justice.[22][23] During her tenure, Sumbul Siddiqui, served as the Mayor of Cambridge for four years, spearheading a range of initiatives aimed at addressing critical issues affecting the community.Informed by Muslim families, Mayor Siddiqui and School Committee Vice-Chair Manikka Bowman advocated to make meals in Cambridge Public Schools as inclusive as possible, this served both a nutritional benefit to students who cannot rely on a daily packed lunch from home, as well as promoted opportunities for social learning through sharing meals with classmates.[24] In March 2020, Siddiqui responded to the COVID-19 Pandemic, by launching the Mayor’s Disaster Relief Fund, which raised over $5 million to provide assistance to individuals, small businesses, and nonprofit organizations.[25] Additionally, she played a pivotal role in the Cambridge Pandemic Collaborative, facilitating city-wide COVID-19 testing and organizing neighborhood vaccine drives to ensure widespread access to essential healthcare services.All school staff working in-person were provided with free COVID-19 testing twice per week through a partnership with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.[35] In June 2021, she helped create a free summer program called RECESS that provides students with STEAM focus activities and outdoor play.[47] In March 2023, Siddiqui also hosted a Women’s History Month themed trivia night and an art contest that received 45 submissions.In May 2023, Siddiqui worked with the student School Committee representatives to host an Ice Cream Social voter registration event.Reporter, Diti Kohli, notes that in "interviews over the last six months, they said Siddiqui undermined their self-esteem and jeopardized their future job prospects, behavior they say prompted people to leave her employment under difficult circumstances.The aides — half of whom are women of color, and most of whom are no longer directly involved in Cambridge politics — described experiences including the mayor berating them for small mistakes such as typos, commenting on their bodies, and denigrating them to other colleagues.Siddiqui responded to these allegations of workplace mistreatment “are [either] simply not true or mischaracterizations.“While I acknowledge that I have high standards for my staff, I am continually open to learning how to be a better supervisor.