ABOUT ASHLEY SHADE
Who is Ashley Shade?
Ashley Shade has called North Adams home since 1991, when she moved here with her family at age four. She graduated from Charles H. McCann Technical High School and earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, where her interest in politics and civics began. After college she worked outside Boston for a few years, and in 2014 she came home to North Adams.
Her first campaign for City Council, in 2017, fell short. Ashley was elected to the North Adams City Council in 2021, becoming what is believed to be the first openly transgender person elected in Berkshire County, and took office in January 2022. On election night, she promised to listen to the whole city. "I don't have all the answers, but I'm willing to listen and find them," she told WAMC.
Her second term began with her unanimous election as Vice President. In her third term, beginning January 1, 2026, she was unanimously elected President of the North Adams City Council. That made her by the Berkshire Eagle's account, the first openly transgender council president in Massachusetts and the second in the country. Her colleagues chose her for the role, and she holds it in trust.
As President she presides over the nine-member Council and sets its legislative agenda. She chairs the Codification Review Committee, established in 2025 to modernize the city's ordinances, and has previously chaired the Finance Committee and the General Government Committee. As of 2026, the legislative pipeline includes codification, rental ordinance updates, an artificial intelligence ordinance, and Ollie's Law. Her work on the Council has focused on removing rules that caused harm without serving the city. Soon after taking office, she introduced the successful repeal of an obsolete curfew ordinance, and she opposed requiring secondhand stores to report their inventory to police every month. She co-sponsored the 2025 resolution declaring North Adams a sanctuary city and place of safety for transgender, nonbinary, and LGBTQIA+ residents, which passed 6 to 3. In April 2026 she introduced the S.A.F.E. AI ordinance, Safeguards for Artificial Intelligence, Fairness and Equity, which remains under review.
Ashley works as a Billing and Collections Specialist in Patient Accounting, and her professional background spans hospitals, pharmacies, and long-term care facilities. Earlier she served as a Senior Service Support Consultant at Wayfair, where she led an employee resource group for LGBTQ+ employees and allies and was appointed to the Corporate Impact Council, helping drive culture change within the global organization. That range of work has given her a close view of the pressures facing residents in and around North Adams.
Her advocacy has run alongside her public service throughout. She served on the North Adams Human Services Commission and as president of the Berkshire Stonewall Community Coalition. She serves on the city's Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity, and Access Commission, which she co-chaired from January 2022 to January 2026. She is a former Chairwoman of the national nonprofit Outright USA and a former member of the National Transgender Visibility March policy team. In 2021, her election as chair of the Libertarian Party of Massachusetts made her what is believed to be the first transgender person in Massachusetts elected to chair a state political party. She left the Libertarian Party in 2022, joined the Democratic Party in 2023, and served as Political Director and a Vice President of the Democratic Freedom Caucus through 2024.
Since 2024 she has served on the Board of Directors of And You Welcomed Me, a nonprofit that supports LGBTQ+ refugees from East Africa and helps resettle them in Washington, D.C., and across the United States.
Ashley writes at Never Alone. Never Afraid., a publication she launched in April 2026. Season One ran twenty-three weekly issues, moving between personal essay and long-form civil rights writing, with pieces on the persecution of marginalized communities, institutional failure, and the work of governing a small city. Every issue is free to read. Each one closes with the words the publication is named for.
In March 2026 she was inducted into the North Adams Women's Leadership Hall of Fame.
Ashley's Vision
People first. When the Council set its goals for 2026, Ashley put it plainly. "My first and top priority is the people of North Adams," she said in January. She wants residents in the room at City Hall, and she wants government to hear directly from the people it serves.
Do no harm. When she first took the oath of office, Ashley promised to do no harm. She rejects a politics of the greater good that helps the most people and leaves everyone else behind. Her leadership is rooted in making sure no one is left behind.
Laws people can read. North Adams last updated its city code in 1964. Ashley believes any resident should be able to find a city law and understand it without hiring an attorney. The two-year recodification now underway is removing contradictions and outdated language so the code serves the people bound by it.
Safe, affordable homes. Her proposed rental ordinance updates would close enforcement gaps "to make sure someone can't operate a rental without properly maintaining it," as she told The Berkshire Eagle. Fines for noncompliance would flow to the city's new Affordable Housing Trust.
A voice for every resident. As President, she gave residents more time to speak at Council meetings and ended the requirement that speakers state their home address. She wants people to feel they have a real voice in their government.
Representation that saves lives. A few years ago, a family moving from Texas with transgender children reached out to her. They chose North Adams because the city had a transgender councilor, and they knew they would be safe here. "That's the most important thing I'll ever do," she told the Eagle.
Five principles guide Ashley's public life: Compassion, Education, Love, Liberty, and Ubuntu.
Compassion asks us to see the person affected by every decision. Education gives people the knowledge and tools to understand their government and shape their future. Love reminds us that no one should have to face hardship alone. Liberty protects the right of every person to live authentically and determine the course of their own life. Ubuntu recognizes that our lives are connected, and that our community grows stronger when we refuse to leave one another behind.
Ashley's own experience has taught her what it means when institutions fail to see the person standing in front of them. It is why these principles are more than words on a website. They are the standard she brings to public service and the foundation beneath her priorities for North Adams.
Media
Our Home - North Adams
A City That knows how to Rebuild
North Adams was built on industry. By 1905, Arnold Print Works employed some 3,200 people on Marshall Street as one of the world's leading producers of printed textiles. In 1942, Sprague Electric, a manufacturer of capacitors and other electronic components, bought the complex. For decades it anchored the city's economy, building components used in everything from consumer electronics to the atomic bomb. At its height, Sprague employed more than 4,000 people in a city of just 18,000.
Over the past four decades, North Adams has gone through tremendous change and faced extraordinarily difficult struggles. More than forty years have passed since Sprague Electric closed its Marshall Street operations in 1985. Thousands of jobs that once supported families throughout our community were gone, and we are still living with the effects of that economic transformation.
Our city found a new path. MASS MoCA opened in the former Sprague complex in 1999, helping transform North Adams into a destination rich in arts and culture. What had been a symbol of industrial decline became one of the largest contemporary art museums in the country and an anchor for a new creative economy. That transformation is an important part of the North Adams story, but the next chapter must focus on the most important part of our city: the people who live here.
Nearly one in five North Adams residents lives below the poverty line, and our median household income remains far below the statewide figure. Our hospital closed in 2014 and did not reopen as a full hospital until 2024. Berkshire County files restraining orders, a key indicator of domestic violence, at a rate 41
percent higher than the state average. Although overdose deaths fell sharply in 2025, our overdose death rate remains significantly higher than the Massachusetts average. We also continue to confront challenges involving housing, mental health, access to care, and economic opportunity. These are complicated problems, but they demand the same determination North Adams has shown throughout its history.
Housing sits at the center of that work. This year I introduced rental ordinance updates to close enforcement gaps and, as I told The Berkshire Eagle, "to make sure someone can't operate a rental without properly maintaining it." Fines for noncompliance would go to the city's new Affordable Housing Trust, so that accountability helps pay for the homes our community needs.
North Adams has the potential to become a stronger economic center for the Berkshires. We have room to grow and a historic downtown. Real estate here remains comparatively affordable, and we are surrounded by remarkable natural beauty. Albany, Boston, and New York City are all within reach, without all the crazy city traffic. We have MASS MoCA and a creative economy with international reach. We are home to the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and neighbor to Williams College. These are tremendous resources for a city our size, and we should make better use of them.
It is time to connect those resources to the next stage of our economic development. North Adams can support the businesses already here while recruiting new employers and creating opportunities for entrepreneurs. We can pursue opportunities in technology, advanced manufacturing, healthcare, biotech and life sciences, the creative economy, and other industries capable of providing quality jobs. We can build stronger connections between our schools, colleges, workforce development programs, local businesses, and new employers so that people can build careers here without believing they have to leave North Adams to build a future. Economic development should ultimately be measured by what it does for people. Can residents find meaningful work? Can they afford a home? Can they start a business? Can they raise a family here? Can they receive the healthcare and support they need? Can our young people look around North Adams and see a future for themselves?
Those are the questions that matter.
Good government starts with laws people can read. Our city code was last comprehensively revised in 1964. Through the two-year re-codification now underway, we are removing contradictions and outdated language so that any resident can find a city law and understand it without hiring an attorney.
The city needs to keep its focus on its most important resource: the people of North Adams. Elected officials are chosen to represent people. They are no better than any other citizen and hold no greater privileges. Their duty belongs to their constituents, every one of them, whatever their party or background, wherever they live, and whatever they earn. When government stops focusing on the people it serves, it stops properly representing them.
As Council President, my duty is to the people of North Adams. That is why I expanded public comment and ended the requirement that speakers state their home address. As I told my colleagues in January, "I want to see people here. I want to hear from you."
When I came home to North Adams in 2014 and came out as my authentic self, this city welcomed me. I found a place where I could build a life and become part of a community. As I later told The Berkshire Eagle, "I felt safe here." Every person who calls North Adams home deserves that same sense of safety and belonging, whoever they are and wherever they come from. None of us can do this alone. On the night I was first elected to the City Council, I said, "It's going to take all of us to work together." That remains true today.
Through Compassion, Education, Love, Liberty, and Ubuntu, we can build a North Adams where economic growth and human dignity advance together, where people have the opportunity to build good lives, and where the city's next transformation is measured by how fully its people share in it.
North Adams has rebuilt before. Together, we can build what comes next.
Ashley Shade is honored to serve as President of the North Adams City Council.