In 2007, Matti Herrera Bower became Miami Beach’s first woman mayor, and its first Hispanic mayor. It was just the latest in a long series of firsts for this tenacious community activist. Mayor Bower started out more than 30 years ago as a PTA mom, fighting to save an elementary school in danger of closing. She also joined the fight to save the historic Art Deco district in South Beach, which led her into yet another battle to help create decent affordable housing for the elderly and young families.
As is typical of her, Bower didn’t know when to quit solving problems, so she went on to run for the Miami Beach City Commission, becoming its first Hispanic female member in 1999. There she caused a lot of trouble in all the right places — resulting in a new focus of the city on providing more and better parks programs for children, affordable housing and social services to the elderly, and a clear direction toward empowering civil rights for all citizens, regardless of gender or sexual identity.
After eight years mixing it up with her colleagues, Bower was drafted by a grassroots coalition of citizens to run for mayor. Her enthusiasm for helping others – with problems big and small – and her independent-minded leadership, have endeared the community to the woman everyone calls simply “Matti”. “Matti is my name,” the Mayor explains. ”The title comes and goes.”