Kim Janey began her journey on the path to justice as an 11-year-old girl being bused from Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood.
In March of 2021, Janey was sworn in as the 55th Mayor of Boston—the first woman and the first African American in the role–after a decades-long record as a community activist and advocate for children and families. She was elected to the city council in 2017 based on that activism and served as president of the most diverse Council in the city’s history.
But her path to the highest ranks of policymaking circles wasn’t easy. Janey, who is now the CEO of Economic Mobility Pathways (EMPath), spoke to NPF’s Future of the American Child fellows about growing up in Boston and leading the city.
Janey was on the front lines of the battle to desegregate Boston’s schools, facing rocks and racial slurs during Boston’s busing era in the 1970s.
At 16, she got pregnant. Janey said her daughter is how her purpose around child advocacy was revealed to her.
“I think in my early days of motherhood, I had to prove people wrong… It was through her that I realized as I’m trying to provide a better life for her and not be a statistic. I understood that to provide this better life for her, that I had to care about other kids as well.”
At the time of her daughter’s birth, she was homeless. “My father drove me to the hospital when I went into labor and it was understood that I was not coming back home. My first apartment, I got with a Section Eight voucher. I was able to buy my home with a first-time homebuyer’s program.”
Janey said she brings her own experience to her work.
“Generational wealth isn’t built up for a lot of folks who look like us,” she said.
Her organization, EMPath, works to help families withstand bumps in the road. EMPath has an individual coaching approach – called Mobility Mentoring, which is a one-to-one service approach. They also have a shelter in Massachusetts – which is the only state in the nation that provides family support for women and children or men and children.
“Poverty is violent, it is traumatic, and it impacts one’s ability to make progress. Children who are born into poverty and who experience trauma on a regular basis, it literally changes the way their brains are wired.”
Journalists who write about poverty need to know poverty is not about individual choices, Janey said. “And how we write about it, how we talk about it, it all matters.”
Janey told the fellows about the Charles Stewart case: in 1989, Stewart, a white man living in Reading, MA killed his wife but claimed that a “Black boogeyman did it. “You had police just going door to door, literally door to door shaking down every young Black man in the neighborhood. And this happened in 1989. And in 2023, the story’s back up. The Boston Globe is doing a huge series…. on how everything went wrong. What I don’t remember seeing was how complicit the media was and all of that.”
At EMPath, Janey said they have a story-sharing network where participants find the power in their own stories. “They’re going down to the State House and they’re testifying and they’re getting involved on different legislative actions and meeting with different reps and senators, et cetera.”
Use an equity lens when reporting, she admonished fellows, and understand how important lived expertise is.
Access the full transcript here.
This fellowship is funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Heising-Simons Foundation. NPF is solely responsible for programming and content.
