Vicky Frausto ’15 was appointed Mayor of Sunnyside, WA in January 2026 and has been a City Councilmember since 2024. A proud Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity (OMA&D) alumna and former UW staff member, she is also the Director of Operations at Empowering Latina Leadership & Action (ELLA) and ELLA Adelante. She holds Bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and American Ethnic Studies and Diversity from the University of Washington and a Master of Public Administration degree from Seattle University.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Julia Ceraolo: You were appointed mayor — the first Latina mayor of Sunnyside, WA — in January of this year. Congratulations on that. You were also born and raised in Sunnyside. What inspired you to run for City Council and Mayor? Could you take me through your thought process as you were preparing to make the leap?
Vicky Frausto: When I first decided to run, back in 2023, I was still working for the University of Washington, for Professional Organizational Development (POD). When COVID happened, and everybody ended up teleworking, I went back to Sunnyside to work from there. I was able to stay, with all my family here. I was asked the question about running for public office by a long-time mentor of mine, Evangelina “Bengie” Aguilar, who in 2001 was the first Latina elected to the Sunnyside City Council.
Bengie had chaperoned a trip to Washington, D.C. that I went on when I was in high school, for the Bert Corona Leadership Institute. (Bert Corona was a civil rights leader for farm worker labor rights.) The messaging around that time for first generation migrant students was about how we should be taking up space and aspiring to have a seat at the table in leadership positions. It was also 2008, a historic election season. When I got to know Bengie, it just expanded this conversation that has never ended. Bengie is in Sunnyside still, so when I was still a student at UW, I’d reconnect with her every now and then, and she’d ask, When are you going to run for public office? Obviously, the answer had always been, I don’t live here, Bengie. I live in Seattle, so there’s no way that I can.
Fast-forward to 2023. I was approached again by Bengie and a community organizer, Chelsea Dimas, before the deadline for filing for office, and I finally said yes.
I realized that with a lot of rural communities, so many of us leave and never permanently return. We gain skillsets at the UW or somewhere else, and we don’t often bring them back to our hometowns. I also learned how much discrepancy there is in representation in Sunnyside, a community that’s 86% Latine.
We are living in the 95th percentile for the worst air pollution in the country, according to the EPA. Yakima County has high rates of asthma and other chronic illnesses. Our workforce is underdeveloped. We have an education system that is failing our students. When I was reflecting on all this, I knew I had to do this. I had to continue the campaign, and I knew that now I was continuing the campaign to win. For the first time in the history of Sunnyside, we flipped the council, and it was the most representative of the city demographics it had ever been.
I was elected to serve the remaining two years of an existing four-year term. My predecessor stepped down after moving out of the district about two years into her term. A special election was then held, and when I was elected, I served the remaining two years of that term. Then in 2025 I ran for reelection, and we won by 60% of the vote. In January of 2026 I was appointed Mayor by my peers.
Sunnyside operates under a city-manager council form of government, so the mayoral position is selected by a majority vote of the City Council from among its members. I was elected by the voters to serve on City Council, and I was subsequently appointed by a majority of the Council to serve as Mayor.
Julia Ceraolo: How have your first months in office gone?
Vicky Frausto: I was just recently sitting on a panel at a convening with a national nonprofit organization called Poder Latinx. I was asked, How has it been and what has it meant for you to be the first Latina mayor in a city that is overwhelmingly populated by Latinos, Latine folk? I answered by saying, it’s bittersweet. It’s sweet because it’s an honor, and I don’t take that lightly. And it’s bitter because I symbolize so much hope for people in my community. For the first time ever, they see themselves reflected in someone, and they hang so much hope on me, and it’s a huge responsibility because many people expect change to happen overnight.
And the reality is that in my shoes, being the first, the youngest, the first woman of color, I’m running up against the old guard.
I think it’s a lot more sweet than bitter, but it’s such a huge responsibility, nonetheless.
Julia Ceraolo: Could you delve into your educational journey, from Yakima Valley Community College to the UW, where you earned dual bachelor’s degrees? Tell me about how you were supported by OMA&D while you were a student.
Vicky Frausto: My parents were farm workers who immigrated here to the United States in the 1980s. They always instilled in my siblings and me — I’m the last of six — a tremendous work ethic. I wanted to pursue higher education. And I knew that I wanted to go to the UW ever since I was in high school.
After high school, my father passed away around that time. I obtained my Associate’s at Yakima Valley Community College, as it was known at the time; now it’s YVC. Then in 2012, I was accepted to the University of Washington. Coming from a small town, enrolling at the UW was such a culture shock. Not only are you navigating a big city, but you’re having to navigate a bigger institution. I was sitting in classes where some of my peers talked about sending over their essays to their parents for them to review, or their parents were a doctor or an attorney, and of course, mine were not. Both my parents were monolingual. My mom’s still monolingual, Spanish-speaking only. It was so hard to feel like I fit in. You’re asking yourself, What am I doing here? Did UW make a mistake? My first year reflected that struggle, not because I wasn’t capable, but because I was trying to find my place in an institution that didn’t feel like it was built with students like me in mind.
Eventually I found other students who were part of groups, like MEChA and Unidas Seremos, so I started learning about the Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center. Through some other peers, I learned about the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity and the resources that the department offered.
When I declared my second major with American Ethnic Studies, I remember my advisors connecting me to Raul Anaya [who has since retired after 49 years of service to OMA&D]. Raul, if I’m not mistaken, was the one who helped me find a little bit more funding. OMA&D also funded a Rome study abroad trip. That was the first and only time that I got to do a study abroad. What an experience it was.
There were so many resources that I relied on through the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity. I received advising [Academic Counseling Services] with OMA&D. The ECC was my home. And I got tutoring help at the IC [Instructional Center]. I also participated in the Latine graduation. (It was Latinx graduation, I think, at the time.) It really was just life-changing. I was able to have experiences that I don’t think I would have if OMA&D didn’t exist.
I did political science in 2014, then took a fifth year, and I graduated with AES and a minor in diversity in 2015. I came back to the UW as a temp for the Department of Labor Relations and later was hired permanently with them. Along the way, I knew that I wanted to go back to school and get a master’s. I went to Seattle U for my Master of Public Administration, and I graduated from there in 2020.
Julia Ceraolo: You went on to earn a graduate degree, your MPA, and you’ve worked public service jobs. With your career path, what advice do you have for current students and recent graduates who are interested in government or public service roles?
Vicky Frausto: Follow your gut. I didn’t know that I was going to run for office one day. But I knew that whatever I was going to do, I wanted it to be of public service for others. And I wanted to make sure that I somehow played a role in bridging gaps in opportunity. Thinking about my own parents, being first generation, being immigrants to this country, cultivating the lands as farm workers for over 25 years — and then being victims of worker exploitation, wage theft, unsanitary working conditions, sexual harassment — I knew that I wanted to be a bridge, and I wanted to continue my advocacy work. While on campus, I remember we led efforts in getting UW to divest from Driscoll berries during the time that the farm workers were boycotting Sakuma Farms. I remember we were out protesting and one of the unions came out to protest along with us. President Ana Mari Cauce gave a directive, and we were able to divest across the UW.
If you are interested in pursuing a government job and being of public service, make sure that you’re seeking out mentors, that you’re seeking out people who have done what you want to do and have done it well — have done it while they’re scared, have done it with anxiety, but have done it.
Never take off the organizer hat and make sure that whatever you do, you bring people along with you. Power comes in numbers. Continue to have an advocacy role in whatever role that you are a part of.
Seek out resources and bring them back home, if you’re able to. Especially if you’re a part of a rural community that’s extremely under-resourced. Your skill set is very much needed. Your organizing is very much needed.
Julia Ceraolo: Not many people do what you do — go back and work in the rural communities where they’re from.
Vicky Frausto: It’s so needed.
And we need to fight so much of what’s going on — for example, our water contamination.
I also encourage people to get out and run for office. We will not change the political landscape if we do not change policy, and we can only change true, effective, grounded policy if we are at the helm.
Julia Ceraolo: There’s a tendency to underestimate the power of local government and local-level politics.
Vicky Frausto: It flies well under the radar because we’re rural, because we’re smaller, and because everybody thinks nobody’s paying attention. The organization that I work for [ELLA – Empowering Latina Leadership & Action] is, as some of our counterparts would say, notorious for sounding the alarm on all of these issues.
Julia Ceraolo: It sounds like two issues that are top of mind for you are air quality and water contamination, and the health issues that stem from those things. Can you tell me about some other challenges that you’re facing right now?
Vicky Frausto: I’ve been getting so many messages about ICE presence in our community over the course of the summer. ICE has just been inundating and attacking our communities across the lower Yakima Valley. Yesterday, there were 9 ICE sightings just in Sunnyside alone, with 1 arrest.
I recently had a council meeting where I advocated for the Flock system to be on the agenda. I didn’t know a ton about Flock Safety automated license plate readers until earlier this summer. We were able to organize community members to address the council about the money that we’re spending on this, how it could instead be invested in our community center that’s currently closed, how we could reinvest in youth programming.
The council did not renew the contract for one of the City’s mobile Flock video cameras, allowing that contract to expire rather than committing the City to an additional term. So that was a big win for the community, which showed up and made public comment. We’re still having to deal with our second contract, which is a multi-year contract, and was voted in before my time.
Julia Ceraolo: Earlier you mentioned the nonprofit org you work for, Empowering Latina Leadership and Action. You’ve been Director of Operations at ELLA and ELLA Adelante for about two and a half years. Can you speak a bit more about your work there and describe how you’re balancing your mayoral duties with continued work at ELLA?
Vicky Frausto: Yes, I have been with ELLA and ELLA Adelante, serving as the Director of Operations. My work there is separate from my role with the City, but both are rooted and intertwined in the same thing for me: community.
At ELLA, much of my work happens behind the scenes through operations, programming, leadership development, and civic engagement. But a critical part of our work has also been about creating real pathways to policy change by helping community-rooted leaders step into public office.
Because without changing the political landscape, there can be no true systemic change for communities that have historically been negatively impacted by the status quo. Representation alone is not enough. We need people in positions of power who understand our communities, are accountable to them, and are willing to challenge the systems and policies that have failed them.
ELLA is the reason I became an elected official. It is the reason I became a Director of Operations. And it is the reason I have had the opportunity to help change the conditions of systems that have too often exploited, excluded, or overlooked our residents.
One success story has been ELLA’s work alongside the ACLU of Washington and Amend Law challenging the Sunnyside School District’s at-large election system under the Washington Voting Rights Act. That work resulted in the district moving to a five-district election system, including three majority active Latinx voter districts. The result has been a complete shift in who is represented on our school board and who has access to those seats.
Balancing both of my roles requires me to be intentional with my time and clear about the boundaries between the two roles. But my organizing work has also shaped so much of how I show up as an elected official. I never really take my organizing hat off. I am always thinking about who is not in the room, who is going to be impacted by the decisions we are making, and whether the people most affected have an opportunity to be part of the conversation.
Julia Ceraolo: Any final comments about your career or OMA&D?
Vicky Frausto: If it weren’t for OMA&D and the resources and the community building that I experienced on campus, I don’t think I would have had a success story. You all have created a support system for many of us to thrive. Thank you all for all you do.