Meet Saura

I grew up in Mac-Groveland near the Church of the Nativity. I attended Groveland Park Elementary, Hidden River (formerly known as Ramsey Junior High), and Central High School.  I know this area and I love it.  It’s the reason I’ve maintained my long-time roots here.  I know I want my children to have the same great experience growing up in Ward 3 that I did.

When I’ve seen the need for change in my community, I have taken action to make it better, and I have the receipts to prove it. Even as a young person, I stood for equity, inclusion, and justice for all of us. Whether it was being the only girl on my little league team that they said I was too young for or organizing fundraisers around Highland for natural disaster relief when I was in high school.  I owe a lot of that to my mom, who brought me along to stand up for reproductive justice outside of the Planned Parenthood in Highland when people sought to stand in the way of people getting the reproductive care that they needed. I continued my activism in high school by being a leader in the Central Young Democrats and volunteering on various political campaigns.

Ultimately, my talents in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) lead me to pursue a degree in engineering. Even then, I wanted to engineer things that would help our community, so I pursued a bachelors and masters degree to focus on civil engineering. As a civil engineer, I work to make sure that our buildings and infrastructure work for all of us and are built to last. As a woman in engineering, I’ve had to overcome many biases in a male-dominated field, and I continue to mentor other young women in STEM serving on the board of a mentoring program called ACE (Architecture Building Construction) Twin Cities and as an adjunct professor in the architecture department at the University of Minnesota.

Equity and inclusion are especially important to me as a transracial adoptee.  I knew when my son was born that he would face the biases that many of our BIPOC neighbors face.  This drove me to turn my attention more locally, so I joined the Macalester-Groveland Community Council. I was incredibly proud to work on the Inclusivity Task Force to make sure that our Board’s elections had the highest turnout in history. With my background in STEM, I also spent a lot of time looking at demographic data to make sure that our neighborhood decisions had a focus on equity and inclusivity.

I know this community, and I love it.  I’ve lived here as a child growing up, as a renter and young professional, and now as a home-owner. My roots are here.  My heart is here. This community and the opportunities that it gave me made me who I am today. For the 30 years that I have lived in Ward 3, I’ve shown up to create those opportunities for others. I’m excited to bring my passion, tenacity, empathy, and professional expertise to give back to the community that has given so much to me. If you share my vision of building a Saint Paul that is built to include all of us and last far into the future, I hope to earn your support in November.

In Solidarity,

Saura Jost