Draft:Alyia Gaskins

Alyia Smith Parker Gaskins (born 1988 or 1989) is an American politician who has been a member of the city council of Alexandria, Virginia, since 2022. A Democrat, she is her party's nominee for the city's 2024 mayoral election.

Biography
Gaskins was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and raised by her mother and grandmother. She attended an all-girls private school through a scholarship awarded to her by the Fund for the Advancement of Minority Education. She went on to attend Vanderbilt University, graduating in 2010 with a bachelor's degree in medicine, health and society, and from the University of Pittsburgh with a Master of Public Health degree in 2011.

After her graduation, Gaskins moved to the Washington metropolitan area, where she first worked as a policy associate for D.C. Hunger Solutions. She then joined the National League of Cities, becoming a senior health and wellness associate. After moving to Alexandria, she began taking courses at Georgetown University to earn a master's degree in urban and regional planning, and to work for the Center for Community Investment as its assistant networks director. In 2019, she founded CitiesRX, whose stated goal is to help “communities leverage the power of relationships to address the unprecedented challenges of the present with an intentional focus on equity.”

Since 2020, Gaskins has been a senior program officer for an anti-homelessness organization, the Melville Charitable Trust.

Alexandria City Council
In 2021, Gaskins ran for Alexandria city council, believing that the city was in need of a public health perspective in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. She was elected to the council that November, and was sworn in on January 3, 2022.

2024 mayoral campaign
Following incumbent mayor Justin Wilson's decision to retire, Gaskins announced her candidacy for mayor of Alexandria in December 2023. Her campaign's top three issues are public safety, affordable housing, and government accessibility. She received the endorsement of Wilson, and won the Democratic primary on June 18, 2024, by a landslide margin of nearly 30 points. As the Republicans did not field a candidate, and Alexandria is a heavily Democratic city, her primary victory is seen as tantamount to election.

Personal life
Gaskins and her husband, Greg, have lived in the Cameron Station neighborhood of Alexandria since 2016.