Annissa Essaibi George

In 2022, Essaibi George returned to her roots of teaching, working as a substitute teacher in Boston's public schools. She did so amid a shortage of substitute teachers in the city's schools. In April 2022, amid the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Essaibi George made a humanitarian trip to Poland to provide supplies to refugees near the Polish-Ukrainian border. In October 2022, Essaibi George was appointed president and chief operating officer of Big Sister Boston by the nonprofit's Board of Directors. She is lated to begin her tenure on November 28, 2022

In early 2021, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, she partnered with fellow city councilor Michelle Wu to propose a measure that would provide paid leave to municipal employees that feel ill after receiving the vaccine.

In July 2021, amid her mayoral campaign, Essaibi George denied allegations made in an investigative article published in The Boston Globe that she had used her office to try to prevent the construction of a building that would block the views of a building owned by her husband, a real estate developer. If the allegations are true, they pose a potential violation of a state conflict of interest law.

In September 2021, a resolution authored by Councilor Lydia Edwards and co-sponsored by Essaibi George and Michelle Wu was passed by the City Council. The ordinance extends paid child leave for municipal employees to all forms of pregnancy loss, including abortion (as opposed to the existing law, which only covered loss of pregnancy by miscarriage), and also extends it to those welcoming a new family member or acting as a caregiver. The ordinance was signed into law by Acting Mayor Kim Janey soon after.

On January 27, 2021, Essaibi George confirmed that she would run in the 2021 Boston mayoral election, considered a "wide open" race due to the then-expected confirmation of Mayor Walsh as United States Secretary of Labor; Walsh was confirmed to his Cabinet post in March.

In the general election, Essaibi George placed emphasis on the fact that she is a native Bostonian (her opponent, Wu, is originally from Chicago). During a radio interview, she declared her belief that it was "relevant" that she was a native Bostonian. Some pointed out that 57% of Bostonians were born outside of the state of Massachusetts. In addition, Essaibi George touted herself as having a different leadership style than her opponent, claiming that she makes herself more available to residents and community leaders. However, an early September 2021 poll had shown that more of the primary election's likely voters had personally met Wu than had personally met Essaibi George.

Essaibi George was an early supporter of Ayanna Pressley's successful 2018 Democratic primary election challenge to incumbent U.S. congressman Mike Capuano. During the Democratic primary election of Massachusetts' 2020 United States Senate election, Essaibi George endorsed incumbent Ed Markey over challenger Joe Kennedy III.

Essaibi George was often described as a "centrist" or "moderate" candidate in comparison to the other candidates. Among her endorsers is former Boston police chief William G. Gross, who is also heading one of the two super PACs that backed her candidacy in the nonpartisan primary. That super PAC received $495,000 from New Balance owner and longtime Republican donor Jim Davis, who in 2016 contributed nearly $400,000 to the Trump Victory PAC. Her ties to Pro-Trump groups have resulted in some characterizing her as aligned with Trump or Republicans, which Essaibi George has denied.

Essaibi George's successful 2015 campaign, which first elected her to the Boston City Council, focused on social services, including mental health counseling and services for the homeless. In 2016, she established the council's Homelessness, Mental Health, and Recovery committee. She was critical of Kim Janey's move in 2020, as city council president, to disestablish this committee. For several years, Essaibi George proposed ordinances requiring pharmacies to provide safe sharps waste disposal. An ordinance sponsored by Essaibi George that requires pharmacy chains with more than three locations in the city to do so was passed unanimously by the City Council in October 2020. Essaibi George also organized needle clean-up drives. In 2019, Essaibi George expressed her disapproval for the prospect of creating supervised consumption sites (in the mold of supervised injection sites) in response to drug use in the city. In 2019, Essaibi George advocated for the city to place a full-time social worker and a full-time nurse in every public school. The city, ultimately, implemented this, with Martin J. Valencia of The Boston Globe later attributing this, in part, to her advocacy on the matter.

Essaibi George is affiliated with the Democratic Party. She first ran unsuccessfully for Boston City Council in the 2013 at-large race. She became an at-large member of the Boston City Council in January 2016, following the 2015 at-large election; she was re-elected in November 2017 and November 2019.

After graduating from Boston Technical High School (now the John D. O'Bryant School of Mathematics & Science), Essaibi George attended Bentley College, a business school in Waltham, Mass., for two years, before transferring to Boston University, where she was a political science major. While in college, she interned in the Washington, D.C. office of Max Baucus. After graduating from B.U., she worked as the Student Services Liaison at the Boston Private Industry Council. She continued her education by earning a master's degree in education from the University of Massachusetts-Boston, later teaching social studies electives at East Boston High School from 2001 to 2014.

Annissa Essaibi George (born December 12, 1973) is an American politician who served as an at-large member of the Boston City Council. First elected in 2015, she served on the council from 2016 to 2022. She was a candidate in the 2021 Boston mayoral election and advanced to the runoff election before losing the election to fellow city councilor Michelle Wu.

Annissa Essaibi George was born on December 12, 1973, in Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents met while studying in Paris. Her mother was born to Polish parents in a displaced persons camp in Germany but grew up in Boston. Her father, Ezzeddine, was from Tunisia. They relocated to the United States in 1972, settling in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. She and her three siblings were raised Catholic while her father was a practicing Muslim.