Lauren McLean

Lauren has dedicated her career to protecting what makes Boise, Boise, while ensuring the next generation can build a life here, too. She started off as a resident who just wanted to get involved by knocking on doors and organizing the community to protect our foothills. After the successful Boise Foothills Open Space Levy in 2001, she served on the Boise City Council, and in 2020 made history as Boise’s first woman elected as mayor.

As a community volunteer, council member, and now Mayor, she works alongside neighbors to ensure Boise remains a safe and welcoming place where everyone can live, work, and thrive. Lauren is laser-focused on doing what she’s always done: listen to our neighbors and deliver for our people by building more homes at Boise budgets, investing in parks in every neighborhood, expanding protections for our cherished foothills and open space, and strengthening an economy that provides dignity and opportunity for every Boise family.

Like so many in Boise, Lauren and her husband, Scott—her high school sweetheart—moved here as young newlyweds with big dreams to pay off student loans, buy a home, and build a family in a community they knew was special. She and Scott pinched pennies as they bought a fixer-upper and welcomed their first child. Eventually they became a family of four, they worked hard, their home became the center of gravity for the neighborhood kids, and they made memories doing what so many Boise families love to do: run through our foothills, ski Bogus, and backpack in Idaho’s wilderness. Their kids, Madeleine and Aiden, eventually graduated from public schools and started their own lives.

While so much has changed in Boise over the last few decades, what made Lauren and Scott fall in love with this special place never did: strong neighborhoods, precious open space, opportunities to get ahead, and welcoming neighbors who look out for one another.