Sandra Morgan, East Cleveland Mayor: Most Interesting People 2026 

Sandra Morgan’s leadership journey goes back farther than you might think. 

Flip the calendar to the 1970s, and you will find a middle school Sandra Morgan participating in an ambassador program at Euclid Central Junior High school that sent a few select student leaders to other schools to bond with their peers and compare notes on contemporary issues. 

Although she can’t quite remember the name of the program (“Up Close? Get Close?” Morgan laughs), she said the program supplied her with a profound exposure of bridge-building. She was hooked. 

“I cut my teeth early on diplomacy,” Morgan says. 

Fast forward 50 years and the 64-year-old has unlocked the next achievement of her storied career: becoming the first female elected mayor in East Cleveland history. 

Her Nov. 4 election caps a roller coaster year for a woman who is the product of history — her grandfather was legendary Clevelander Garrett A. Morgan, inventor of the three-way traffic light — though not someone who always had public service in her sights. 

When she grew up in Euclid, Morgan instead imagined herself having a medical career. 

“But chemistry was not my best subject,” she says. 

Determined to see the world and ready for exploration, Morgan left Ohio to attend Smith College, long-revered as a historic women’s college. Although she was nervous to attend the school as a middle-class woman of color at a predominantly white institution, the Smith experience quickly proved transformative. 

“What I found there was that our issues and our insecurities were universal,” Morgan says, “and we lifted each other up and celebrated each other as women in a special way that just doesn’t happen in other places.” 

After Smith, Morgan bounced around the East Coast, met her husband and had three children. When her marriage ended, she was faced with the choice: move back home to Cleveland or try to set up a new life in New York City. 

“It just made far more sense to come back home to Ohio with three children,” she says. 

The move back to Cleveland also provided Morgan with an opportunity for a career change, pivoting from her work in financial services to securing a position as a regional manager for World Trade Center Cleveland. The focus on global issues of economic development fulfilled her “hankering” for international relations. 

A few years later, Morgan pivoted again and was hired as a strategic partnerships director at Kent State University. Although she loved the work of cultivating partnerships with external partners, she very much did not love the drive from Cleveland’s West Side to Kent. On a chance drive around Cleveland with her three kids in the car, the family impulsively stopped by an open house in the Forest Hills neighborhood of East Cleveland. 

“It was perfect, and we immediately felt at home,” she says of the house she lives in to this day. 

Morgan had never held political office before 2025, though she was involved with various civic engagement opportunities, having been appointed to the Cleveland Metropolitan School Board by Mayor Mike White in the 1990s and more recently serving on East Cleveland’s fiscal oversight commission.  

When East Cleveland Mayor Brandon King was removed from office while awaiting trial for theft, Morgan put her name into consideration for the interim mayoral appointment in an effort to bring civility and professionalism to the embattled City Hall. 

A judge appointed her to the role in February, only to have the Ohio Court of Appeals install City Council President Lateek Shabazz as interim mayor in July. Despite the twists and turns (“This year has been like a telenovela,” she says), Morgan remained determined to secure the position, this time through the full election. She handily won the September primary with 78% of the vote and then the November election with 84%. 

Now the work of duly elected mayor begins, and Morgan stands at the ready to lead, with her sights set on working to change East Cleveland’s scarcity mindset and eager to build bridges between East Cleveland and the surrounding municipalities. She has in hand the lessons she learned in 2025 about the strength of her resiliency. 

“I make no promises other than I will work hard, pull up my socks, sharpen my pencils and get down to business,” Morgan says. 

Meet the rest of the 2026 class of Most Interesting People >>

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