ANSHI MORENO JIMENEZ

Deputy Director

Mayor Wu Committee

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Heritage: Ecuadorian

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By: Frank Morris Lopez

 

Awards & Recognitions:

• Department Honors for Senior Thesis, 2019

• Harvard Foundation Award for work in Intercultural Race Relations, 2018
   

Anshi Moreno Jimenez has borne a lot of responsibility for someone her age. At 25, she currently serves as the deputy director for the Mayor Michelle Wu Committee, and recently served as special assistant to the City of Boston chief of policy, supporting the city’s boards and commissions. Before that, she was Wu’s deputy finance director during the 2021 mayoral race. In that role, she reached a $2.5 million fundraising goal by the end of the campaign and maintained donor streams of more than 14,000 individual contacts. 

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Born in Ecuador, her family moved to Boston when she was 4. Moreno Jimenez grew up in Roxbury, an experience that instilled in her that “all politics is local.”

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“I wanted things to change in Boston, especially living in Roxbury and seeing how there were so many projects that were underfunded,” she said. “My cousins also grew up in the area or in similar neighborhoods and we had different paths. Knowing how smart they are and not having the opportunities I have really bothers me. That’s something that really motivates me.”

 

Moreno Jimenez is a first-generation college and graduate school student who is slated to finish her master’s in public policy at Harvard University next spring. As an undergrad at Harvard, she served as president of Latinas Unidas and the Latina Empowerment and Development (LEAD) Conference. Even now, Moreno Jimenez makes sure her work still positively impacts Latinos.

 

“When we started the campaign team, Michelle Wu had said she wanted to do a lot of outreach to Latinos, so we hired a chief of equity and inclusion, who was hired to bring in more Latino leaders to help with voter turnout and building pipeline for campaigns,” she said. “We don’t have that many Latinos running for office, so if we can build that pipeline now, we can have more political leaders stepping up and making sure that we’re addressing Latino issues. That will make a huge difference.”

 

As for her own political future, Moreno Jimenez is currently applying to law schools, and says she wants to stay involved in local or state politics, “but probably on the policy-making side, and a little bit more away from politics.”

 

“Politics can be crazy,” she said, “but when it works and it works well, you can make a difference really quickly.”

 

Moreno Jimenez advises other Latinos to mentor those who come after them and seek help from those who came before them. “Never forget your ‘why’ and where you came from,” she says. “That will be your guiding star.”