London Breed’s rise to power is a distinctly San Francisco story. Born in 1974 at Kaiser Hospital on Geary Street, Breed was raised by her grandmother, Comelia Brown, in the Plaza East public housing projects in the city’s Western Addition. She attended Galileo High School in the Russian Hill neighborhood and graduated from the University of California, Davis, before returning home to San Francisco.
Breed worked at City Hall and then led a nonprofit in the Western Addition until 2012, when she launched her first run for office and was elected to the Board of Supervisors. Breed would briefly become the first Black woman mayor of San Francisco after the death of Mayor Ed Lee, before a special election victory in 2018 and securing a full term as mayor in 2019.
Below is a photo gallery tracking Breed’s journey through the years.
