Biography

I am a fighter for my district and the working people and families of Washington.

I am a mother and a millennial who is deeply invested in the future of our kids and our economy. To me, based on my experiences, this means creating pathways to living wage jobs, housing and healthcare that everyone can access.

• I have two young children and an adult brother with disabilities, giving me an up-close perspective on child care, our K-12 system, and our social support services. I also grew up relying on many of them myself.
• I have gone through our education system the hard way, relying on luck, student loans and scholarships to give me access to where I am today. I deeply understand and empathize with the challenges so many young adults are facing as they make big life decisions and how these can hold back our economic growth and opportunities, as individuals and as a community.
• As a late diagnosed diabetic and mother of young children, I have had to navigate a fraught and expensive healthcare system that has gaslit and confused me, even after I finally gained access to steady health care when I got my first job for the state at 30 years old. And I live every day with the extreme costs of child care and the burden and barrier it creates for families.

I am the youngest WA State Senator and the Vice Chair of the Senate’s Ways and Means Committee, making me lead of the Senate’s Capital Budget which invests in physical infrastructure, public lands and wildlife habitat, school and child care buildings, and more.

• I grew up on housing assistance and state support, which helps me understand how important it is to provide access to not just affordable but also safe and stable housing for every single person. To dream and thrive, you need to stop the ground from shaking under your feet and have your basic needs met.
• I could not afford a home until a personal tragedy gave me the capital to put downpayment on a home, making me the first in my family to own a home just seven short years ago. Until then, I struggled to keep up with rising rents, even as a working professional. I have family members I continue to support in their struggles to stay stable and secure in middle- and low-income housing. I see the housing crisis at work firsthand, and this is an unacceptable reality for Washington families who deserve stable rents and an opportunity for homeownership.
• I feel the urgency of these issues and I now have the honor and the opportunity to address them with my votes and the infrastructure investments I support.

I am also an American Muslim who grew up here as a first-generation immigrant, born in Bangladesh and rooted in the Pacific Northwest. I am proud of my heritage and I celebrate our culture and our community. Washington must be a state where we are all welcome and where we recognize the value and shared humanity of all our cultures.

This is your state Legislature and your democracy, even if it feels distant and constantly under threat. And like many people, I don’t think there is enough access to how the Legislature works, what is going on at different points in the process, how literal and political capital is being used, and how regular people can make change happen in their community.

I want “radical transparency” in our politics. I call it radical because it does not exist right now, and sometimes even someone right in the center of it like me does not fully understand everything that is going on. I do not think this is necessarily nefarious or intentional, but it is because of how the system has been set up and it plays out, without effective communication out to the community about what is truly going on.

I hope to help the public understand how the Legislature works, how they can get involved, and the power they can have to make change. I want to help people better understand the bills and budgets we work on, how I thought about issues and made decisions, and how our actions here in the Legislature connect to the issues you see out in the community.

I cannot promise we will always succeed at this – the Legislature is a confusing institution that is too often stuck in the mud – but I want to do what we can. Feel free to reach out at any time to me at Yasmin.Trudeau@leg.wa.gov with your questions, thoughts, and input, and I hope to do the very best I can.