Sitting in front of a computer screen in her San Francisco office recently, UC Santa Barbara alum Jenny Lam made a confession as she recounted the decision to close the city’s public schools in March, 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I cried that afternoon,” she said. “Because the weight of the responsibility that we knew we had, as school board members, as city leaders."

Lam is the former president of the San Francisco Board of Education, and was a commissioner at the time of the pandemic closure decision. She, along with the rest of the board, was responsible for determining district-wide policies.

Her first big test was how to manage the pandemic threatening to upend the learning of over 50,000 public school students, just a year into her role as a commissioner. It was a time filled with high emotion and the need to prioritize the wellbeing of students and families. Her own children were students in San Francisco public schools at the time, making it even more important to Lam to manage pandemic protocols successfully for all.

 Speaking alongside Nancy Pelosi at the Mission Education Center on Day of Action for the Children.

“We felt we had to keep our community safe,” said Lam. “And we were going to do it, we were going to work around the clock, which we did.”

Lam graduated in 1997 with a degree in Political Science and Asian American Studies. It led her to a more than 20-year career in the public sector, in positions where she championed family and education rights. Today, she has just finished a six-year term as a school board commissioner.

Lam first began on the Board of Education in early 2019, having gained a background in public education as the education advisor in former San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s administration. Originally opposed to the idea of running for public office, Lam spent over a decade working for nonprofit organizations including Wu Yee Children’s Services, Oakland Asian Students Educational Services (OASES), and Chinese for Affirmative Action.

In her role at the affirmative action non-profit, Lam became very connected to the group’s work in the education sphere. In the 1970s, it prepared the Supreme Court case Lau v. Nichols, a landmark ruling granting the right to supplemental English classes for non-native speakers in the United States.

“I was so connected to Lau v. Nichols for Affirmative Action because I’m a daughter of immigrants,” she explained. “My first day in kindergarten, I did not speak any English.”

Her experience there led Lam to consider running for public office, thinking that if she did, education would be a natural fit. But as many times as she was asked by individuals in her communities to run, she would always answer with a “no.” It wasn’t until that day in 2018, when Mayor Breed asked Lam to remain in her administration as the Education Advisor, and also join the Board of Education, that Lam finally agreed to run.

Her original appointment to the Board of Education was to serve the rest of a previous board member’s term. Then she declared her candidacy for a second term. Lam won over 200,000 votes, granting her another four years in office.

From the beginning, Lam felt that working at the local level in the Bay Area would have the most impact. That has led to more than 20 years of advocating for students and families.

“I [thought] that it would be more meaningful for me to go back to San Francisco, which has a rich history of activism, a rich history of social justice and public service, that I go back there first,” she explained.

Lam with SF Board of Supervisors President, Rafael Mandelman, at a Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco.

Alia Engst is a third-year UCSB student majoring in Global Studies and Technology Management.