Margaretta Wan-Ling Lin

Founder and Senior Advisor | margaretta@justcities.work

Margaretta is the granddaughter of Taiwanese independence revolutionaries and daughter of immigrants seeking political freedom. Her mentors, Ron Dellums, June Jordan, Yie-Chen and Shu-Ren Lin, and Thich Nhat Hanh taught her love-based justice. A survivor of racial exclusion and hate crimes, today Margaretta combines her experiences as a leader in government, organizing, movement lawyering, and social enterprises into a force for justice and hope.

Margaretta has been the mother of multiple racial justice institutions that provide hope, concrete resources, and leadership development to thousands annually. These include Just Cities, the Dellums Institute for Social Justice, Beloved Oakland Event, the Black Cultural Zone Collaborative, EBCLC’s Community Economic Justice Clinic, Youth Together, Youth Uprising, the Skyline High One Land, One People Center, the Oakland Housing Resource Center, the City of Oakland’s Strategic Initiatives, the OSNI Collaborative, and the West Oakland Train Station Partnership.

She has been the architect of innovative racial inclusion and justice policies and plans in California cities. These include the Ron Dellums Fair Chance Housing policies, Los Angeles Department of Transportation Vision Zero Anti-Displacement and Racial Justice Framework, Re-entry Rapid Housing Fund, immediate dignified housing for Unhoused people, a countywide Anti-Displacement Safety Net for low income tenants and homeowners, a comprehensive Housing Equity Roadmap, nationally recognized foreclosure prevention and mitigation, model federal stimulus for racial justice, racial reconciliation policies, multiracial youth leadership and violence prevention, a bilingual education master plan, and helping to end racist testing that tracked California’s Black students.

Margaretta is an inspirational speaker and teacher. She has presented to global, national, and local audiences including at the UN Convention on Engaged Buddhism in Hanoi. She has designed and taught new courses in City Planning, Law, and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley.

Margaretta received a J.D. and Masters in Asian Studies from UC Berkeley, and a B.A. in Asian Studies and Religious Studies from University of Virginia.

Photography by Lea Suzuki, SF Chronicle.