When Sadaf Jaffer first moved to Montgomery Township in 2012, the five elected officials on the affluent New Jersey town’s governing body were all white Republicans.

But the town itself was becoming increasingly diverse and Democratic, and she came to feel that its top committee no longer represented the community as a whole. In 2016, Jaffer decided to take a big leap: She was going to run for political office herself.

Years later, Jaffer, a Muslim American woman of Pakistani heritage, is now the mayor of Montgomery Township. The significance of Jaffer’s appointment as mayor on Jan. 3 reaches far outside the boundaries of her small town. She’s the first South Asian American woman to serve as a mayor in New Jersey, according to multiplereports, and one of the first in the entire country.

The 35-year-old told HuffPost she entered politics to break exactly those kinds of barriers.

“If I think we need more women in politics, I should be willing to stand up and do it myself,” Jaffer said.

A Scholar Dreams Of Running For Public Office

Jaffer said she’s long had a desire to run for public office. Born in Chicago to Pakistani Muslim immigrants, Jaffer said she grew up listening to NPR in the car and discussing the news of the day with her family. She remembers her dad staging mock presidential debates between her and her brother.

“My parents were always interested in what was happening in the world and encouraged us to express our own ideas,” Jaffer said.

Jaffer eventually pursued a career in academia, becoming a scholar of South Asian, Islamic and gender studies. She now works as a postdoctoral research associate at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, part of Princeton University.

Soon after Jaffer and her husband moved to town, she started noticing the disconnect between the racial and religious diversity there and the lack thereof in the Montgomery Township Committee. The committee is composed of five elected officials, one of whom is chosen by its members every year to serve as mayor.

The last time a Democrat was elected to the Montgomery Township Committee was 2010, according to CentralJersey.com.

In the wake of President Donald Trump’s election, Jaffer said some residents of the town began expressing concerns about his rhetoric toward minorities. She said she personally also began to hear stories from neighbors about a rise in bias incidents.

Weeks after Trump issued the first iteration of his travel ban, a resident asked the committee during a meeting to make a statement showing support for Montgomery’s diversity. Jaffer said she felt the township committee didn’t properly respond to those concerns. While the mayor at the time acknowledged the town’s diversity, he told the resident his approach was to “just focus on Montgomery.”

“It made me feel like they were not willing to listen,” Jaffer said. “When you come from a minority background, you might hear stories that other people don’t hear. That’s why it’s so important to listen to each other. We can’t assume we know what other people’s experiences are.”

Jaffer said she also felt as if leaders in her town were talking about affordable housing as if it were something the upscale community needed to be “saved” from ― a position she felt stigmatized people who need affordable housing.

“I didn’t feel that my political perspectives were being represented in my town,” Jaffer said. “There are lots of ways that political ideologies have an impact on a local level.”

“At some point I realized that even if you’re an advocate, if the people you’re advocating to, the people who are elected officials, have very different values than you, you hit a wall,” she added.