Robin Wonsley Worlobah

Early life and education Wonsley was born in Chicago in 1991 and grew up on the South Side. She attended Carleton College as a Posse Foundation Scholar and graduated in 2013 with a B.A. in Women’s and Gender Studies. After graduation, she was awarded a Watson Fellowship that supported her travel to Canada, Australia, South Africa and Ireland, where she studied criminal justice policies and practices.

She completed a mini MBA in Nonprofit Management from the University of St. Thomas in 2015 and began a Ph.D. program at the University of Minnesota in 2018.

Career After the 2015 killing of Jamar Clark by police officers in Minneapolis, she became politically active over the next several years, including in the Black Lives Matter movement and Fight for $15 organizing efforts to raise the minimum wage in the city. In the summer of 2020, she participated in the George Floyd protests. She also became an organizer in the defund the police movement, an effort to reallocate some community resources towards crime prevention services and programs. The election also became the first time Minneapolis elected a majority of people of color to the city council. After the election, she identified housing as a major issue for the ward, and rent control as one of her policy priorities. In January 2022, she called for a stop to evictions from homeless encampments, and was joined at a protest against eviction at the Near North homeless encampment by councilmembers Elliott Payne, Jeremiah Ellison, Jason Chavez, and Aisha Chughtai.

As of January 2026, Wonsley is the council's minority leader. She serves as the chair of the Climate & Infrastructure committee sits on the Public Health, Safety, & Equity committee.