Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak is redefining the look of local leadership and inviting all members of the community to do so.
Elected in 2024, Mayor Mulvaney-Stanak is the 43rd mayor of Burlington, and the first woman and queer person to hold the role.
“For me, as the first woman, the first out queer person, I make room at the table as much as I can,” Mulvaney-Stanak said. “I get an opportunity to … bring others to the table who have not really had a voice or even been considered in government.”
7.4% of Vermonters identify as LGBT, the third-highest rate among U.S. states. Burlington has long been considered a haven for queer rights, holding the state’s first pride festival in 1983.
Mulvaney-Stanak’s journey in politics formally began in 2009, when she became the youngest member of the Burlington city council at the time. However, her exposure to politics and activism started much earlier, growing up as the daughter of two political activists.
Her parents were part of anti-war and anti-nuclear power efforts in the Vermont community. She followed in their footsteps, receiving a political science degree from Smith College.
“I remember sitting underneath tables when they would hold their political organizing meetings,” Mulvaney-Stanak said.
She spent most of her professional career working with non-profits across Vermont and advocating for workers’ rights. She founded a consulting business, EMStrategies, in 2018 and worked with labor unions, non-profits, and school districts to develop better community engagement strategies.
Additionally, she served in the Vermont House of Representatives from 2021 to 2024 for Chittenden 17.
As Mulvaney-Stanak approaches the halfway point of her three-year mayoral term, her main priorities have been community safety, increasing affordable housing and addressing climate change, she said.
“I would say one of my prize achievements has been helping the police department be able to rebuild, and rebuild in a meaningful way that’s based on values,” Mulvaney-Stanak said.
Burlington’s police department has faced serious staffing issues in recent years. Mulvaney-Stanak has worked to advance community safety, specifically working alongside the Burlington Police to improve the department.
“When I first came in, people had stopped calling the police for a response because calls were getting stacked,” Mulvaney-Stanak said.
When Mulvaney-Stanak was elected in 2024, the crime rate was up 23% compared to 2023, and BPD was addressing many more incidents with 50% fewer officers, according to the February 2024 Burlington Police Report.
“People also didn’t know who to call if it wasn’t something where it seemed even appropriate to call police, but something unsafe was happening or they were concerned about someone,” Mulvaney-Stanak said.
Additionally, at the time, 11% of incidents were “stacked,” meaning there was a delayed response due to a lack of staffing. According to the February 2025 Burlington Police report, certain calls are still being stacked; however, they have created an approach for triaging calls when fewer officers are available to respond, known as the priority response plan.
The February 2025 report also shows an increase in officers on patrol, from 21 to 26. They also have six community service officers and six community support liaisons, who respond to incidents like an animal problem or a neighbor dispute.
Additionally, the CSLs are embedded social workers with expertise in mental health, substance use and homelessness.
“We had all these other wider spread issues like homelessness and mental health crisis and folks struggling with substance use disorder, especially related to opioids,” Mulvaney-Stanak said.
The CSLs are trained to respond to these calls and are part of the new Crisis, Advocacy, Intervention Programs division, which includes mental health clinicians in the Burlington Crisis Assessment, Response and Engagement Services team.
For homeless individuals, the Mayor has added basic amenities such as porta-potties to public land, she said.
“When we came in, we tried to really have a humane response,” she said.
Additionally, she is considering the types of housing available to Burlington residents, as well as exploring other solutions, such as how the city can utilize public land for additional housing development, she said.
“A lot of immigrant and refugee families are larger,” Mulvaney-Stanak said. “These smaller units that are going up in some of these fancier buildings are not only significantly unaffordable … But for the … working folks we have here, we need more options for them.”
Recent projections show the city needs to build between 7,000 and 10,000 new housing units within the next 25 years.
In her 2025 State of the City address, Mayor Mulvaney-Stanak discussed Burlington’s housing shortage and shared updates on initiatives such as the South End Coordinated Redevelopment Project. This would bring 1,000 new homes to Burlington.
Additionally, she spoke about the efforts she has taken to address climate change. In March, she held the first meeting with the Mayor’s Community Advisors on climate, which will offer recommendations on how Burlington can be more climate resilient.
Since climate change is an ever-present threat to the city’s future, her team has begun to prioritize adaptability and resilience, she said.
“We each have a role to play in creating the vibrant, resilient, and thriving city that Burlington is and will continue to be,” Mulvaney-Stanak said in her 2025 State of the City Address. “I look forward to the good work we will do together in the year ahead.”
In her interview with the Cynic, Mulvaney-Stanak emphasized that she wants UVM students to feel like Burlington is their home and that they are integrated into the city, she said
“We very much consider UVM students to be members of our community, and we are so thrilled you all are here because you add some of that vibrancy,” she said.
