Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, President, Baltimore City Council

Baltimore voters elected Stephanie Rawlings-Blake City Council President in November 2007. In January 2007, City Council members elected her to fill the unexpired term of former Council President Sheila Dixon. Rawlings-Blake was first elected to the Baltimore City Council in 1995 at age 25, the youngest person ever elected to the City Council. She represented the Council’s 5th District from 1995 to 2004 and the 6th District from 2004 to 2007, serving communities throughout West and Northwest Baltimore. She also served as Council Vice-President from 1999 to 2007. Before Rawlings-Blake was elected President, she chaired the Council’s powerful Budget and Appropriations Committee, where she advocated on behalf of the City Council during budget negotiations with the Administration, ensuring that constituent concerns had a strong voice in the City’s annual budget process.

Born on March 17, 1970, Rawlings-Blake is a 1988 graduate of Baltimore’s Western High School, and in 1992 she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. She received her Juris Doctor from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1995.

From 1998 to 2006, Rawlings-Blake was an attorney with the Baltimore Office of the Public Defender. She is a member of the Federal Bar Association and the Maryland State Bar Association. Rawlings-Blake is also a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Epsilon Omega Chapter and a former At-Large Member of the Alliance of Black Women Attorneys.

As Council President, she chairs the City’s Board of Estimates, which conducts formal hearings on City agencies’ operating and capital budget requests and is also in charge of awarding contracts and supervising all purchasing by the City.

Council President Rawlings-Blake serves on numerous boards and commissions, including the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association; Hilton Baltimore Convention Center Hotel Corporation; Baltimore Museum of Art; Baltimore City Human Services Commission; Live Baltimore; Maryland Science Center, National Aquarium in Baltimore, Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems, Inc.; Living Classrooms Foundation; Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore and the Parks and People Foundation.

Council President Rawlings-Blake has been honored with numerous awards. Recently the National Congress of Black Women named Rawlings-Blake a Shirley Chisholm Memorial Award Trailblazer. In 2007 she was selected by The Daily Record as one of "Maryland’s Top 100 Women." The National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs named her one of Baltimore’s "Young Women on the Move." She has also received the "Hearts of Love Recognition Award" from Aunt Hattie’s Place, and the "Passing the Torch Legacy Award" from Baltimore African American Real Estate Professionals.

A member of Douglas Memorial Community Church, Council President Rawlings-Blake lives in Baltimore’s Coldspring neighborhood with her husband Kent Blake and their young daughter Sophia.

Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake