Oakland, Calif., Mayor Libby Schaaf’s career wound its way through multiple sectors, starting when she was an attorney at the city’s largest law firm, always seeking a way to make an impact. While Schaaf worked as a litigator, she and her mother launched Oakland Cares, a volunteer program providing busy professionals with one-shot volunteer opportunities.

Then, during one of Schaaf’s own volunteer experiences with Oakland Cares—tutoring children at a local school—she hit a tipping point. When Nathan, a 9-year-old boy she was tutoring, ran across the gym to greet her with a hug, she recognized that her real joy was in public service. Schaaf decided to leave the law firm to start a centralized volunteer program for the Oakland Unified School District.

When searching for her next position, Schaaf received a dream job offer to be a nonprofit program officer. At the same time, in the course of speaking to her network about her passions and interests, she became aware of another opportunity: to serve as a legislative aide to the president of the Oakland City Council, Ignacio De La Fuente.

So Schaaf made the pivot into government work. “What I love about the government is that you have both the privilege and the responsibility to look at the bigness, the comprehensiveness, and the interconnectivity of all of the issues that you care about. It’s hard sometimes because you have to make the tough choices, you have to analyze the trade-offs, but it also is very empowering because most problems are complicated, and they involve many levers in order to make meaningful change.”

Read the full profile of Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf by Jeanine Becker at Stanford Social Innovation Review.