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As the first Filipina chief of staff in Los Angeles City Council District 14, Lauren (Delgado) Hodgins ’10 is helping shape policy and deliver services in one of the city’s most diverse districts.

Under the leadership of Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, the Mount Saint Mary’s alumna oversees a team of more than 30 staff members and directs operations across neighborhoods spanning Downtown Los Angeles, Skid Row, Eagle Rock, Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights and El Sereno. She translates policy vision into action, ensuring equitable city services reach communities with vastly different needs.

“It is incredibly operations-heavy and people-management-heavy,” Lauren says. “You have to accept that you don’t know everything, and that is okay. Every day I learn something new.”

Her path to City Hall was anything but predictable.

When Lauren arrived at Mount Saint Mary’s, she planned to become a nurse, following her parents’ footsteps. By the end of orientation, she had changed her major to English.

“I realized vocationally I was not meant to be a nurse,” she recalls. A conversation with an English professor at the Circle on the Chalon campus — a place she still calls the site of many of her “core Mount memories” — set her on a new course. She graduated with a degree in English, building the analytical and communication skills that would become central to her career.

Graduating in 2010 in the aftermath of the Great Recession, Lauren postponed plans for law school and took an administrative role at a lobbying firm. What began as front-desk work evolved into drafting contracts, then serving as a junior lobbyist, senior associate, and eventually vice president of the firm. Along the way, she specialized in affordable housing advocacy, helping secure nearly $3 billion in tax-exempt bond financing for housing, education and health care projects. Her work contributed to the creation and preservation of nearly 300,000 affordable housing units citywide.

Her commitment to housing is deeply personal. Her family worked in real estate and experienced significant financial hardship during the 2008 recession.

 “For every project I helped close, I could count how many affordable units that was. That is hundreds of families,” she says.

In 2024, after helping manage Councilmember Jurado’s successful campaign, Lauren stepped into public service full time.

Beyond her work at City Hall, Lauren is also the co-founder and executive board member of USAPAN, a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying Filipino American and AAPI visibility and leadership in Los Angeles. What began as a single Filipino food festival in Eagle Rock drawing 25,000 attendees evolved into Filled Market, a cultural marketplace that incubates small businesses and has been featured in the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. During the pandemic, USAPAN’s pop-up markets helped vendors recover losses and grow into brick-and-mortar businesses.

A proud lifelong Angeleno, Lauren traces her commitment to public service back to her upbringing. “In Filipino culture, service to others is everything,” she says. That ethic of care continues to guide her leadership, grounded in accountability and impact.

Looking back, she credits the Mount for equipping her with the tools to find her voice and the confidence to use it. She also points to the mentorship of English Professor Marcos Villatoro, who challenged her to think critically, write boldly and see storytelling as a form of leadership.

Lauren also speaks passionately about the power of a women’s college experience. “Bringing women together in one place who are pursuing growth and leadership — that synergy is powerful,” she says.

Her advice to Mount students and alumnae considering public service: “Say yes to opportunities, even when you don’t feel ready. Readiness is an effect of action, not a prerequisite for it. And don’t be afraid to work hard. Hard work builds resilience — and people notice it.”