Jane Castor featured in national publication as one of six mayors making a difference

Jane Castor makes it official — she is running for a second term.

Tampa Mayor Jane Castor was featured in The Hill as one of six mayors making a difference.

The article posted to the news site Wednesday highlights Castor’s commitment to increase student engagement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, particularly among young girls.

“To Jane Castor, six months into her first term as Tampa’s new mayor, today’s students are tomorrow’s engineers and scientists, the key to developing a workforce that can attract new businesses hungry for well-educated employees. The STEM programs beginning to scale in Tampa and surrounding Hillsborough County are an early investment in Tampa’s next generation,” The Hill wrote.

They pointed to a lesson at Young Middle School in downtown Tampa where students are learning about the city’s water system including how it flows through the sewers, how it gets through a series of pipes to their taps and about the machines used to make it all work.

 “One of the factors that [companies] always research is the availability of a qualified workforce, and fortunately we have that. But we want to ensure that availability moving forward,” Castor, a Democrat, told The Hill. “We get to expose all of these young students to STEM opportunities around Tampa.”

The Hill profile included five other mayors from Kansas City, Missouri; Brooklyn Park, Minnesota; Minneapolis; Alexandria, Virginia; and Phoenix, Arizona.

The Hill profile is another example of how Castor is taking her hometown leadership onto the national stage. Castor made headlines when she was elected last year as the city’s first openly gay Mayor.

She gave interviews on national television, National Public Radio and several nationwide publications including CNN, The New York Times, ABC, NBC, CBS, The Hill and Huffington Post. She even made headlines across the pond in the British tabloid the Daily Mail.

Castor’s rise to fame came as part of what USA Today called “a mini-wave” for LGBTQ mayors.