As the Democratic Party rapidly diversifies, young, progressive women of color such as Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, and Wu—Pressley’s former council colleague in Boston—have ignored calls to “wait your turn” and have run for office pushing progressive policies.

Read: Ayanna Pressley’s win is the biggest upset yet for progressives

As Peter Beinart wrote in the fall following Pressley’s victory as the state’s first black woman elected to Congress, politics are no longer local, for “the part of America you’re from matters less than it once did, and the kind of America you believe in matters more.” The kind of America that new Democrats believe in is often an activist one, which is visible in traditional, hidebound Boston, where the city council overwhelmingly passed Wu’s resolution to support the Green New Deal earlier this month.

With Pressley, the first woman of color elected to the city council, having moved on to the national level, the Boston City Council remains an incubator of new politics. Ten years ago, no woman of color had ever served on the council. Today it’s composed of seven white men (three of whom are departing in this year’s election) and six women of color, including its president, Andrea Campbell, who succeeded Wu last year.

Wu is an example of this transformation. She is not from Boston. A Taiwanese American, she is the council’s youngest member, at 34. In a 19-way race for councilor-at-large seats in 2013, her first political run ever, she came in second. Just a few years later, she was elected unanimously as the first woman of color to serve as council president. And now people are already talking about her as the next mayor of this traditionally Irish Catholic city, which, for all its progress, remains one of the two most populous cities in the country (the other being Indianapolis) that has yet to elect a mayor who is not a white man, despite being majority-minority for the past decade.

Wu stands out from many of her political peers because of her particular leadership style. Unlike Pressley, Wu isn’t known for being an impassioned speaker. Unlike Ocasio-Cortez, Wu would never be described as a “bomb-thrower and agitator.” For most of her life, she didn’t think of herself as a leader; her report cards once urged her to participate more. “It sort of takes people by surprise how she is able to take command of a room, a situation, or a group of people to get things done,” says Roger Lau, who worked as the political director of Elizabeth Warren’s Senate campaign during the time Wu served as its constituency director.

But Wu has emerged as one of the city’s most effective and diplomatic politicians. She has negotiated with the mayor on issues such as government transparency, short-term-housing-rental regulations, and green energy, earning a reputation for both hyper-detailed policy work and humility in the face of a prideful city. When we met for coffee after Wu’s morning of petitioning, she deflected from commenting on “old” and “new” Boston, tucking her shoulder-length black hair behind her ears, eyebrows sloped up. “Even the folks who some people would call ‘Old Boston’ today were ‘New Boston’ at one point in their family’s history, right?” Wu said.