ALUMNI PROFILE Sofia Aragon (JD ’02)
Health centered
Sofia Aragon (JD ’02) serves as mayor of Burien, Washington
Sofia Aragon immigrated from the Philippines to the U.S. with her family in 1975, shortly after President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law nationwide. Her family settled in Seattle. Although her mother had been a registered nurse and her father a physician, “once they got to the U.S., they realized there was no assistance for them to get their licenses,” Aragon says, making their career options more limited. Aragon became a registered nurse in 1997.
SOWING THE SEEDS: “I practiced in a health center that served a lot of immigrants, people who were transient, people who had a lot of needs,” Aragon says.
When the state government passed legislation to test a new state-funded health insurance program (prior to the Affordable Care Act), many private insurers withdrew from the individual insurance market in Washington, leaving many people with no coverage at all.
LEARNING THE LAW: After earning her JD, Aragon spent the next 14 years working on issues that mattered to her, first as legislative and policy liaison for the Washington State Department of Health, then as senior governmental affairs advisor for the Washington State Nurses Association.
“Lawyers had tools to influence policies that mattered to them, and I wanted to have those tools too.”
Still, Aragon believed she could have the most impact on health care through lawmaking. Although her 2018 run for the state senate was unsuccessful, the process positioned her for another role in Burien, a south suburb of Seattle, home to 52,000 residents.
“I got to know members of the Burien City Council and established relationships with voters,” she says. “So I won that race [in 2019] with the highest percentage of votes ever in the primary.” From there, she was elected mayor—the first woman of color to hold the position—and began her two-year term in January 2022.
USING THE TOOLS: As mayor, Aragon says her law degree helps her “to work faster,” which is important because it’s a part-time job. She maintains her full-time job as executive director of the nonprofit Washington Center for Nursing.
She notes that, because of Burien’s proximity to Sea-Tac Airport, environmental exposures and airport expansion are continual issues that require navigating the local laws of both Burien and the Port of Seattle, state laws, federal laws, and FAA regulations.
“I feel I have an easier time than others teasing out the technicalities of legal issues—working through thorny issues that can have a lot of conflict or confusion. Whether you’re a lawyer or a lawmaker, finding solutions is an essential part of the role. That’s what people depend on us to do.” –Liz Miller (July 2023)
Note: As of press time, Aragon was running for a higher office, a seat on the King County Council, District 8. The primary was to be held on August 1, 2023.
