South End resident Michelle Wu filed with the Office of Campaign and Political Finance this week as a candidate for one of Boston’s four at-large City Council seats. 

"I’m running because I believe in Boston and I believe that in city government we can make changes," Wu said.  

Wu, 27, is an attorney and former law student of U.S. Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren. She most recently worked full-time on the Warren campaign, where she directed statewide outreach to communities of color.   

"Boston’s greatest strength is diversity and the city council should reflect that diversity," she said. "Over 50 percent of the population in Boston is female and there's currently only one woman on the entire Boston City Council."

Prior to the Warren campaign, Wu worked for Mayor Thomas M. Menino in the Mayor’s Office at the City of Boston as a Rappaport Fellow in Law and Public Policy. At City Hall, she created the Restaurant Roadmap guide, which for the first time outlined in one place the city’s restaurant permitting process from start to finish. Wu was also involved in the city's Food Truck Challenge, which launched three new food trucks on City Hall Plaza.  

Wu has a background in community advocacy, having worked at the WilmerHale Legal Services Center in Jamaica Plain, providing legal advice to low-income small business owners. She also worked at the Medical-Legal Partnership at Boston Medical Center on immigration cases for survivors of domestic violence. Wuserves on the boards of the Kwong Kow Chinese School in Chinatown and the Puerto Rican Veterans Monument Square Association, and she is part of the RoxVote coalition in Roxbury.

As a City Councilor, Wu said she intends to use her background working with diverse communities to bring new ideas to city government.  

Wu said she's not currently pushing any issues specific to her upcoming campaign. 

"Right now I'm just getting out and having conversations with people and trying to understand neighborhood by neighborhood what the priorities are," she said. "I want to know what city government can do to help. Even working on complicated, hard discussions you can still make incremental steps along the way that help people immediately."

Wu graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. She now lives in the South End with her husband and two sisters.