WALTHAM, MA — Since he was first elected in 2013, John McLaughlin has been the city councilor for Ward 4. And he hasn't had a challenger to that title. Until Kelly Damm. The mother of two moved to Waltham the year after McLaughlin took office and says she didn't think she'd be one to enter the political fray.

And then the 2016 presidential elections got her thinking about community engagement. It was something that was missing on a national scale and it was something, she noticed that was missing on the local level, too. What's needed, she decided, was transparency that allows for deeper constituent engagement and involvement in Waltham. When she started to engage, she found it difficult. She went looking for information on the city website to hit up a city council meeting all she could find was the bare minimum, if that.

"Many of the council meetings only had minutes from months ago. There was not a lot of information about upcoming items aside from the docket. It's hard to come to the council prepared if you can't find anything on the website," she said. It can be off putting and disillusioning, for many. And that needed to change, she said. Going to a city council meeting solidified that for her.

"When I attended the city council meeting earlier this year was shocked at lack of diversity: both demographically and in perspective," she said. Who is she anyway?



Damm grew up in a New Jersey suburb before she went to Boston College. Her mom was a public school teacher and father a government communications officer, they instilled in her values of inclusion, compassion, respect and hard work, she said.

Mentors along the way taught her to approach life as a "traveler, and not a tourist" and to find solutions to problems by first identifying their root causes. She has spent the majority of her career in operations, administration and finance in the nonprofit sector, and works as an administrative professional in Cambridge but has traveled extensively in Latin America and is fluent in Spanish.

Damm says if there's one thing that has surprised her as she's been knocking on doors and stumping, is the question about whether she's going to have enough time between work and motherhood to sit on the council.

"It's something that I didn't find was being asked of my male counterparts," she said noting she's got a very capable husband who happens to be a great father. It was a family decision she said, to run. "I'm committed to this and don't see my parenthood as something that prevents me from being a councilor, but as something that might help me dive into the issues deeper with different perspective."

