If Jane Kim looks familiar, it could be that you recognize her as the SF Board of Education president, not to mention the leading candidate in the race for District 6 supervisor (a post held by controversial legislator Chris Daly since 2000). Or you might know her as the electric-bass player in a female indie-rock band called Strangely, which performs at venues such as Brainwash. “After politics, my second love is definitely music,” says the Stanford grad.

Kim’s approachability stems from growing up in a Korean-immigrant family in NYC’s subsidized housing program. “I’ve always been conscientious of the different levels of opportunity in a city,” says Kim, whose grassroots campaigning—door-knocking, pavement-pounding, and hand-shaking—preaches more affordable housing, local-business development, and efficient neighborhood services such as street clean-up and safety patrols.

During her six-year stint as a youth organizer for the Chinatown Community Development Center, Kim helped Asian-immigrant students organize graffiti clean-ups and healthier school lunches. In her role as president of the Board of Education, she’s established a peer-mediation curriculum in schools. “I love empowering young people to become change-makers,” says Kim. “I’ve never met a youth who didn’t want to make a positive change.”