As profiled in last month’s issue of the Hill & Lake Press, the race for the Ward 7 City Council seat has heated up with the entrance of two challengers to incumbent Katie Cashman, who won her 2023 election by a razor-thin 177 votes.
Ward 10 is a different matter: Incumbent Council Member (and now Council Vice President) Aisha Chughtai won her 2021 and 2023 elections with approximately 60% of the vote both times, marking her as a formidable candidate.
Political newcomer and Uptown resident Lydia Millard says she’s up for the challenge and will seek the DFL endorsement.
So who is Lydia Millard?
With deep roots in Minneapolis, Millard says she’s all about hard work and organization. Her resume supports that contention.
Although still a relatively young 33 (albeit slightly older than both Chughtai and Cashman), Millard has worked corporate management positions since she was 21, currently working as a senior business partner of store operations at Target headquarters, and serving as executive director of the Stevens Square Community Organization, a position she assumed last August.
Born in Gary, Indiana, Millard moved to Minnesota with her family at the age of 2, growing up in North Minneapolis, while her mother worked as an accountant for the city. Schooling began with Head Start, then Harvest Prep, Willard Elementary and middle school at Ascension Catholic School.
Millard started high school at Benilde-St. Margaret’s, where she was a few years ahead of Cashman, but finished in Louisville, Kentucky, after her family relocated in her junior year. Active in extra curriculars, Millard was a member of the inaugural Farview Park girls’ basketball team, and was a theater kid, appearing in performances at the Capri Theater in North Minneapolis.
After graduating from high school in Louisville, Millard promptly moved back to the Twin Cities and got to work.
By 21 she had worked her way up to a supervisor’s position at UPS in Northeast Minneapolis, the youngest supervisor in the facility’s history, the only woman, and one of only two people of color.
Millard says this was one of the most formative jobs of her life, a highly competitive position that reinforced the importance of open, honest communication and balancing competing interests.
Millard’s trajectory at UPS was interrupted by an ailing grandmother in Louisville, and she moved back to Kentucky for four years to help care for her.
While there, she spent three years in a pre-med program at Kentucky State University, an HBCU, but ultimately concluded that a life in medicine wasn’t for her.
After moving back to Minnesota, Millard got a job as an operations manager for Marriott, a position she held until the COVID pandemic disrupted the hospitality industry and she was furloughed.
The furlough didn’t last long, though. Millard was actively recruited by Target, where she became an executive team lead for service and engagement, managing front-end services for the Target store on Nicollet Avenue, downtown.
In that position, Millard managed a team of over 80 people, with responsibility extending to cashiers, checkout and customer service.
Millard also provided on-site training for more senior Target executive hires, and her skills in that area got her noticed and promoted to her current job at the company’s headquarters.
Millard says that her background in organization and planning means that when she sees a problem, she tries to jump in and solve it.
She serves as co-chair of Target’s Minneapolis Volunteer Chapter, and her volunteer efforts have included Boys & Girls Club, mentoring and job prep for young people, working with neighborhood organizations, and preparing refugee meal baskets.
Millard also serves on two nonprofit boards, chairing the Partnership in Property Commercial Land Trust, and serving as a board member for the Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association (which sponsors Art-a-Whirl, among other things). A contact through a networking group led to her current position leading the Stevens Square Community Organization.
Millard says her busy work and volunteer life didn’t leave much time for politics, but that changed after witnessing the decline of Uptown and the challenges faced by the Stevens Square and Whittier communities.
From her Uptown apartment, Millard witnessed residents and businesses steadily leaving, crime increasing, chronic homelessness causing chronic problems, all while rents have risen and the affordability of the area has steadily declined.
Millard believes that the problems flow, in part, from a lack of leadership being present in the community, characterizing Ward 10’s current leadership as inattentive and combative.
In particular, Millard says she’s heard from business owners and residents who regularly complain of unreturned phone calls and an overall lack of constituent services.
Since announcing her candidacy, Millard lists constituent services as her top issue, along with supporting small businesses, working with the Fifth Precinct to address the public safety crisis, and finding practical, affordable housing solutions.
As to this latter point, Millard is opposed to legalizing encampments, which she says are not dignified or safe, and she says the different branches of local government need to work together to address the root causes of homelessness.
Millard says that during her time managing the downtown Target store, she had regular, in-depth conversations with a number of individuals who were chronically homeless. The result of those interactions is a belief that homelessness has four major root causes:
- substance abuse,
- mental health issues,
- post-incarceration transition problems, and
- people who simply fell through the cracks as kids.
Millard says that only by approaching these issues in concert will the problem be effectively addressed, and she hopes to work with existing, successful organizations to leverage their experience and expand their coverage so these critical needs can be effectively met.
