Cambridge Lays Off Staff From Diversity-Related Commissions

Updated November 20, 2025, at 5:09 p.m.

Cambridge laid off seven employees across diversity-related city commissions on Thursday afternoon, multiple people with direct knowledge of the matter confirmed.

Staff from the Peace Commission, Commission on the Status of Women, and the LGBTQ Commission work with city departments to make Cambridge more equitable, according to the city’s website. The entire full-time staff of the Women’s Commission has been laid off, a person familiar with the decision confirmed.

The changes are accompanied by a restructuring of Cambridge’s Equity and Inclusion Department. Five executive directors within the EID — overseeing areas including the Police Review Advisory Board, the city’s internal Office of Equity and Inclusion, and the Minority Business Enterprise Program, as well as the commissions — will now report to the city’s chief of equity and inclusion, Deidre Travis Brown, according to an email sent to city staff on Thursday.

“The City and Department’s commitment to these programs and commissions is unchanged,” Brown wrote in a Thursday afternoon statement, sent after the changes were announced.

“The goal of this restructuring is to improve the integration of related boards and commissions, centralize administrative support, consolidate roles and responsibilities, and establish a new Executive Director structure to better support the Department’s mission,” she added.

The set of layoffs came just days after Cambridge took an $8 million hit to its budget, after federal housing funding was revoked because of federal adjustments to housing programs. The City has prepared to tighten its belt for months, with City Manager Yi-An Huang ’05 instructing departments to cut unnecessary spending, aiming for a 2.1 percent decrease in spending in fiscal year 2027.

At a Monday City Council meeting, Huang cited the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 128-page notice to grant recipients, which said that cities that had discussed diversity, equity, and inclusion in previous proposals would likely be ineligible for continued funding, as the cause of the housing grant cuts.

Thursday’s layoffs are the first major personnel cut that the city has announced since the federal cuts became public. City councilors were not given advance notice of the cuts.

The executive director of the Women’s Commission, the project coordinators of the Women’s and Peace Commissions, and other staff from across the LGBTQ Commission, the Commission on Immigrant Rights and Citizenship, and the Human Rights Commission were all included in the layoffs.

Vice Mayor Marc C. McGovern confirmed that the city had made staffing changes in regards to certain commissions in the city, citing a conversation that he had with Huang this afternoon.

“What I do know is that there are going to be staffing changes to a number of different commissions, you know. And my hope, and what I’ve been assured, is that the work of these commissions will continue,” McGovern said.

“I only heard about this today, so, you know, I don’t have all the information at this point,” he added.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

—Staff writer Shawn A. Boehmer can be reached at shawn.boehmer@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @ShawnBoehmer.

—Staff writer Matan H. Josephy can be reached matan.josephy@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @matanjosephy.

—Staff writer Avani B. Rai can be reached at avani.rai@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @avaniiiirai.

—Staff writer Jack B. Reardon can be reached at jack.reardon@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @JackBReardon.