M artin L uther K ing J r .
January 11, 2017
2017 special edition
Mississippi
Alberta
North Portland
Page 33
Vancouver
East County
Beaverton
The New Year started with Multnomah County being led by a County Commission in which all the elected members are from minority groups for the first time ever. Pic-
tured (from left) are County Chair Deborah Kafoury and Commissioners Sharon Meieran, Jessica Vega Pederson, Lori Stegmann and Loretta Smith.
Role Models of Color
County achieves first majority minority board
Multnomah County ushered in
the New Year by welcoming three
new commissioners to its board
and setting a new bar for diversity
in representative government with
every elected member of the com-
mission representing a minority
group, the first time that has ever
happened.
Sharon Meieran, who rep-
resents west Portland, was sworn
in along with Jessica Vega Ped-
erson, who represents east Port-
land, and Lori Stegmann, who
represents east Multnomah Coun-
ty and Gresham. They join in-
cumbent Commissioner Loretta
Smith, who represents north Port-
land and Chair Deborah Kafoury,
who leads the board.
“This is a milestone,” said
Stegmann. “As an immigrant, as
a minority woman, as someone
who grew up in Rockwood, one
of the poorest neighborhoods in
Oregon.”
Stegmann is the first Asian
American elected to the board. She
was adopted as a baby from South
Korea and raised in a low-in-
come family. Her father worked
as a logger and her mother cared
for the family. She still remem-
bers the stigma of receiving food
stamps, sticking actual stamps to
a card in what was like a shameful
version of Bingo in exchange for
blocks of cheese, powdered milk
and other donated foods.
“Why is there so much shame
in being poor?” she wonders. “Of-
ten times you don’t have anything
to do with it.”
Growing up in the 1970s, Steg-
mann said she wanted to be like
Marsha Brady of the Brady Bunch
TV series, blond and fair skinned.
“When I was growing up, I
didn’t have any role model of col-
or,” she said.
That has changed. Stegmann
grew her own business as an in-
surance agent, bought a house
in a middle class neighborhood,
and raised a daughter, who at 18
can now see a woman serve as
Gresham’s police chief, women
lawmakers in both her house and
c onTinued on P age 37