In 2019, Bushra Amiwala became the youngest Muslim elected official in the United States and the first Gen Z woman to hold elected office anywhere in the country. She was 21 years old. Now at 28, with a Forbes 30 Under 30 honor, a UN Gender Equality Award, and seven years of school board governance under her belt, Amiwala is running for Congress in Illinois’ 9th District. And she’s not waiting for permission.
Jan Schakowsky held this seat for nearly three decades. Now that she’s retiring, 15 Democrats are fighting for it. Amiwala is the youngest in the field, but her resume says otherwise.
Who Is Bushra Amiwala?
Amiwala was born in Chicago in 1997 and grew up in the Rogers Park neighborhood before her family moved to Skokie. Her parents are Pakistani immigrants who built a life in the suburbs, and their story is central to who she is as a candidate.
She graduated from Niles North High School, where she was on the policy debate team and won the national debating championship at Harvard. She earned her bachelor’s degree from DePaul University and a graduate degree from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. Before launching her congressional campaign, she spent five years as a Solutions Consultant at Google.
But the political career started before any of that. Amiwala won her seat on the Skokie School District 73.5 Board of Education when most people her age were still figuring out their college majors. She’s served for seven years now, overseeing budgets, teacher-union negotiations, and equity initiatives. She knows what governance actually looks like because she’s been doing it since she was a teenager.
Why She’s Running
Amiwala’s platform centers on making government work for the people who need it most. That means a living wage for workers, student debt relief, reproductive freedom, Medicare for All, and environmental justice. She’s direct about wanting congressional Democrats to do more to resist Trump-era policies, not just issue statements about them.
She’s also been outspoken about foreign policy, being one of the first elected officials to sign onto a public letter from Jewish Voice for Peace calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. In a district with one of the most diverse populations in the state, that position carries weight.
“I want to make government resources more accessible to constituents,” she’s said, and that idea of accessibility runs through everything she does. From school board meetings in Skokie to policy discussions at Northwestern, Amiwala approaches politics with the same energy: show up, know your stuff, and make sure the people who are usually left out of the conversation have a seat at the table.
A Different Kind of Candidate
Here’s what separates Amiwala from the pack. Most candidates in this race have decades of legislative experience, mayoral titles, or long careers in the legal system. Amiwala has something else: she came up in the digital age, organized in spaces where politics and culture overlap, and built a following by being authentically herself in a system that rewards conformity.
She wrote about her political journey while she was still in college. She won a UN award at 24. She managed a Google portfolio while serving on a school board. Her generation doesn’t see politics and real life as separate things, and that shows up in how she campaigns, how she communicates, and what she prioritizes.
The Culture Connection
If you want to understand why Amiwala’s candidacy matters culturally, look at who she’s speaking to. The 9th District runs through Evanston, Skokie, and the North Side of Chicago, one of the most ethnically and economically diverse corridors in the state. Amiwala is the daughter of Pakistani immigrants running in a district where first-generation Americans, working-class families, and young progressives are looking for someone who actually gets it.
She’s not hip-hop in the literal sense, but she’s hip-hop in the way it counts: she’s young, she’s sharp, she built her platform from nothing, and she refuses to wait for the establishment to hand her a turn. That energy is exactly what the culture has always been about.
How to Follow the Campaign
- Website: bushraforcongress.com
- Primary Election: March 17, 2026
