Lynne has strong leadership experience!

Lynne has served as the President of the Seattle Community Colleges Federation of Teachers, AFT 1789 and the chair of the AFT WA Community College Council for over 6 years. She was the co-chair of Washington State Jobs With Justice for five years. These positions strengthened her leadership and coalition building skills.

Lynne's education well prepares her for the state legislature!

After graduating from Inchelium High School on the Colville Reservation in Eastern Washington in 1979, Lynne earned her Bachelor's degree and a Masters of Science in Community Psychology from California State University, Long Beach. In 1995 she received a Ph.D. in Social Welfare from the University of Washington. Her educational experiences taught her how to turn compassion and a quest for justice into smart policy.

Lynne is a teacher!

In 1993, Lynne fulfilled her dream to become a community college teacher at Seattle Central Community College. Starting out part-time, then as a full-time and tenured professor, teaching remains her passion. Lynne began teaching at California State University in Long Beach as a graduate student. She moved back to the Northwest to receive her Ph.D and served as an adjunct professor at Western Washington University in Seattle's Human Services Program.

Lynne knows policy and advocacy work!

As the president of the American Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 1789, she has advocated for preschool through higher education legislation in Olympia for the past six years. As a graduate student in Long Beach, Lynne developed a program for the city designed to reduce institutional racism in Job Training Partnership Act Programs. On returning to Seattle, she worked her way through college by teaching part-time and conducting evaluation research of a teen parent program in Everett. Her dissertation was a policy analysis of welfare programs.

Lynne is a social justice and community activist!

Lynne has been active in the social justice and peace movements for many years. Through her leadership, her local union has participated in advocating not only for public education, but also for human and civil rights, protecting the environment, and workers' rights -- locally and globally. From advocating for health care for all to equal pay for equal work, to shutting down the FTFF reactor and no high level nuclear waste in Hanford, to an end to child labor, sweatshops, and global warming to working for immigrant worker rights to improvements in prison education, to marriage equality for all to a living wage campaign, to actively participating in planning two of the largest peace rallies in state history -- Lynne has consistently been in the forefront of the progressive movement in Seattle.

Lynne is a proud mother!

While working her way through school, Lynne also raised two brilliant and lovely children -- Joey and Kia Sanger, now young adults working on making the world better. Both are graduates of Seattle Public Schools.