Linda Dorcena Forry
No. 22615 Linda Dorcena Forry
Linda Dorcena Forry is Vice President, External Affairs, for Suffolk Construction
from Wikipedia
Linda Dorcena Forry (born 1973) is a Democratic member of the Massachusetts Senate, representing the 1st Suffolk district since June 2013. She previously represented the 12th Suffolk District in the Massachusetts House of Representatives after winning a special election in April 2005. Haitian-American, Forry, is the former House Chair of the Joint Committee on Community Development and Small Business.
Forry was born and raised in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. She attended St. Kevin Grammar School and Monsignor Ryan Memorial High School in Dorchester before matriculating to Boston College. She graduated from BC’s Carroll School of Management in 1997. Forry received a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in 2014.
After graduating from Boston College, Forry was a legislative assistant, working for then-State Representative Charlotte golar Richie (Fifth Suffolk District serving Roxbury and Dorchester). When she left the State House in 1999 to work for the executive staff at the City of Boston’s Department of Neighborhood Development, she had risen to the position of Acting Chief of Staff.
From 2005 to 2013, Forry represented the Commonwealth’s 12th Suffolk House district, a cross-section that includes parts of the town of Milton and the city of Boston, including Dorchester, Hyde Park and Mattapan. In 2009, Forry served as Chair of the Black and Latino Caucus. That same year, she was appointed Chairman of the Joint Committee on Community Development and Small Businesses.
Forry won the Democratic nomination in the April 2013 special primary election to succeed state Senator Jack Hart in the First Suffolk Senate district, defeating Rep. Nick Collins. She defeated Republican Joseph A. Ureneck in the final election on May 28 and was sworn in on June 14, 2013.
Forry is married to Bill Forry, managing editor of the Reporter Newspapers in Boston. The couple live in Lower Mills, Dorchester and have four children: John, Conor, Madeline and Norah. Three of her children have been born during her tenure in the House of Representatives.