Alice Wolf

Bottle Bill Wolf’s legislative legacy includes her work to update the state’s bottle bill See Container deposit legislation in the United States. Under her leadership, the Bottle Bill Update became the most talked-about environmental bill of recent years. The Bottle Bill Update passed the Senate in 2012, but was not passed by the House. As of September 13, 2013, efforts were underway to update the Massachusetts Bottle Bill through a statewide ballot initiative.

As a legislator, Representative Alice Wolf served as the House Chair of the Committee on Elder Affairs and on the Women’s Legislative Caucus. She has been recognized for her advocacy through numerous honors and awards including the Executive Office of Health and Human Services Department of Mental Health 2010 Certificate of Appreciation; the 2009 School-Based Health Center Legislative Champion Award; the 2007 NOW Legislator of the Year; the 2007 Byron Rushing Freedom of Religion Award from the Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry; the 2006 Massachusetts Family Planning Association Leadership Award; the 2005 Champions of Children Award from Massachusetts Advocates for Children; and the 2005 Early Education Leadership Award from the Massachusetts Association of Community Partnerships for Children.

In the fall of 1996, Wolf successfully ran for a seat on the Massachusetts House of Representatives, defeating Anthony Galluccio in the Democratic Primary by 89 votes. She was reelected in subsequent terms and served in the Massachusetts legislature for 16 years.

She previously served on the Cambridge, Massachusetts School Committee and Cambridge City Council, as the Mayor of Cambridge, as the mayor from 1990 to 1991.

Wolf served as the mayor of Cambridge, Massachusetts from January 1990 to January 1992. She was elected five times to the Council, serving from 1984 through 1994.

Wolf’s accomplishments on the Cambridge City Council included the establishment and passage of a number of key laws. In 1984, she sponsored the Cambridge Human Rights Ordinance, that protects Cambridge residents from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, as well as other protected classes. Wolf also led the city initiative to create a domestic partners ordinance, and establish the commission to enforce the ordinance.

In 1983, she again ran for election to the Cambridge City Council and was successful. She joined the Council in January 1984.

In 1981, near the end of her fourth term on the School Committee, she felt that her efforts to bring about social equality would be better spent on the Cambridge City Council. She ran for the Council in 1981, but narrowly missed a win in a crowded field of 25 candidates.

In the 1980s, in conjunction with the Cambridge Peace Commission, she created a "peace curriculum," a program of peace education for the public schools, K-12, to assist teachers in assuring kids of all ages could develop a constructive approach to resolving differences and disputes. Wolf led marches and did research to support "economic conversion," trying to convince local companies to convert military-focused enterprises into peace-oriented activities. She developed Sister City relationships, a model for international cooperation at the grassroots level, with San José Las Flores, Chalatenango, El Salvador and Yerevan, Armenia. Wolf led the effort to make Cambridge a Sanctuary City, where persecuted people fleeing tyranny and death in their countries of origin could come when they were not given political asylum in the U.S. Wolf worked with the Cambridge Peace Commission and others to hold a yearly Cambridge Holocaust Commemoration, support Armenia (through the Cambridge-Yerevan sister city relationship) after the 1988 earthquake, continue nurturing the connection with the residents of San Jose Las Flores, El Salvador, and to bring together Cambridge people of diverse backgrounds to support our Muslim neighbors after 9/11.

Wolf’s path to civic engagement and elective office began with participation in the Parent-Teacher Association of the Peabody School in Cambridge, where her sons were students. Deep involvement as a parent with school affairs ultimately led to her election in 1974 as a member of the Cambridge School Committee, where she served from January 1974 through January 1982.

Wolf began her long career in public service when she was elected on November 6th, 1973 as a member of the Cambridge School Committee, where she served from January 1974 through January 1982. While on the School Committee, she championed community involvement in decision-making (such as the hiring of school principals), was lauded for crafting the first plan for racial desegregation of the city’s schools, and provided leadership in the siting of the city’s high school, the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School.

She attended high school at Boston Girls Latin School, now Boston Latin Academy. She graduated from Simmons College (Massachusetts) in 1955 with a degree in Experimental Psychology. In the same year she and her husband, Robert Wolf were married. The Wolfs settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts where they raised a family. She later earned a master's degree in public administration at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Alice K. Wolf (born Alice Koerner, December 24, 1933) is an American politician. She served as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1996 to 2013, representing the 25th Middlesex District. On March 22, 2012, Wolf announced that she would not seek re-election. Her term ended in January 2013.

Wolf was born to a Jewish family in 1933 in Vienna, Austria. Her parents, Frederick (Fritz) and Renee Koerner, fled Nazi persecution in 1938, bringing the family to Brighton, Massachusetts.