STEPHANIE PURE
BIOGRAPHY

When Stephanie Pure was hired by Seattle City Councilmember Peter Steinbrueck five years ago, she already possessed a resume filled with community activism and service.

Fresh from organizing the successful citywide Renters Summit, Stephanie was still a member of the city’s Music and Youth Task Force, a group that helped replace repressive laws banning all-ages dances with a workable code that has protected both teens and their access to music for several years. She also brought a political science degree from the University of Washington and experience working for the Alford Group, a national consulting firm specializing in nonprofit fundraising and strategic planning.

But, she jokes that what most interested Steinbrueck was her five years of customer service experience working at the small business her parents founded when she was a teenager.

That customer service experience helped her assist citizens who called the Steinbrueck office seeking aid in addressing problems ranging from potholes to public policy. In addition to constituent work, Stephanie is the staff lead on external communications and a wide variety of key policy and budgetary issues including the Alaskan Way Viaduct, parks, and public safety.

Stephanie traces her interest in local politics to her Olympia internship with State Rep. Bill Brumsickle as a UW student. While she loved the work, she also saw that education policy is too often created with minimal direct participation from parents, students and teachers — and that the civil rights of many people can be threatened by the whims of the majority.

In addition to her work on the Music and Youth Task Force, Stephanie is a founding board member of the Vera Project, an all-ages music and arts center. She is also a long-time board member of CityClub, a non-profit that produces public forums on issues facing the Puget Sound region, and served on the board of 33 Fainting Spells, a Seattle-based dance theater company that toured nationally for over a decade. She has also serves as a Democratic Precinct Committee Officer in the 43rd Legislative District.

In 2005, she was selected as one of the Puget Sound Business Journal’s “40 Under 40”—a group of young Seattle leaders—for her work in public policy and civic engagement.

She and her fiancé, Dave, recently purchased a house in Fremont shortly after finding out their Capitol Hill apartment building will be undergoing a condominium conversion.