Massachusetts is staring down an uncertain future.

The state needs to add 222,000 new homes over the next decade to address a housing crunch that has driven prices skyward. In many local school districts, students are slow to regain ground lost to the COVID pandemic. At all levels of government, leaders face challenging financial decisions ahead.

And behind all of it, President Donald Trump’s return to office has brought Massachusetts and some of its cities increasingly into conflict with the federal government.

MassLive is highlighting eight leaders to watch in 2026, who will help chart the state’s path in the coming years, each in his or her own way. Some already hold positions of immense power, and their decisions will have tremendous influence over the daily lives of Bay Staters for years to come. Others bring novel ideas to address the state’s most pressing questions or the potential to shape their local community’s success.

They were selected by MassLive staff.

Brian Allen, Worcester Schools superintendent

Across the country, municipal officials face strapped finances and daunting prospects of balancing their budgets.

They might consider looking to Worcester for a vision of the path forward. For 12 consecutive years, Worcester Public Schools has been recognized with a national award for its budgeting process. Only two other school districts in Massachusetts received the award last year.

Behind that process was a team led by Brian Allen, the new Worcester superintendent, now in his first year leading the district. As deputy superintendent since 2022, he oversaw the school system’s finances and its $586 million budget. He attributes the district’s budgeting success to years of stability and consistent planning and lists it among his greatest accomplishments.

Also on that list was his leadership of a multi-year effort to bring the district’s transportation in-house. Millions of dollars had been going to an independent bus contractor annually. Now, those dollars stay within the school system, Allen said in an interview. The quality of transportation also improved with the change, he said, and the district’s bus drivers have been fully staffed for the last two years.

The shift to a district-run bus program also earned Worcester national and state recognition. It’s a process other school districts are now looking to emulate, Allen said.

If these sound like the most mundane, nitty-gritty issues of municipal government or school leadership, that’s because they are. But by capably handling the minutiae, school leaders earn the time to focus their energy elsewhere, Allen said.

“If we’re not dealing with parent complaints on transportation, if we’re not dealing with always facing criticism over our finances, we can use that time to focus on our strategic plan, our overarching goals of the district and really provide the leadership to schools,” he said.

Allen also helped lead advocacy for the Student Opportunity Act, a 2019 state law that provided the most significant update to school funding in over 25 years.

The district is implementing a multiyear strategic vision developed under the previous superintendent, Rachel Monárrez. Among its key features is a push to hire and retain talented teachers, including those who came up through the school system as students.

“We have heard over and over again, ‘We want our teachers to look more like our students,’” Allen said. “Where’s the best place to get that from? Our own students.”

Though he never taught in a Worcester classroom himself, instead joining the district directly on the administrative side, Allen knows the value of Worcester students giving back to their community.

You can find him in the yearbook of Worcester’s South High Community School, Class of 1988.

“I’m a Worcester kid,” he said.

Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, executive director of Lawyers for Civil Rights

Boston-based Lawyers for Civil Rights is in the trenches, fighting multiple key legal battles against the tsunami of shifting policy from the Trump administration.

At the organization’s helm is Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, whose two-decade legal career has included defending voting rights, workers’ rights, the LGBTQ community and more. But the civil rights lawyer is best known for his work on immigration issues.

Under his leadership, Lawyers for Civil Rights has challenged Trump’s effort to discard birthright citizenship, his threats to the federal funding of so-called sanctuary cities and his removal of humanitarian protections for Haitian and Venezuelan immigrants fleeing unrest at home.

In addition to those high-profile cases, Espinoza-Madrigal’s group has also filed claims against immigration agents for violently removing passengers from their vehicles and supported people in need of free legal counsel on immigration issues.

“We are seeing tremendous need on the ground,” Espinoza-Madrigal said. “And the availability of free legal services is one of the most critical interventions at this time. People need free legal support to be able to navigate what has steadily become significant federal overreach.”

He is confident in the organization’s ability to rise to the occasion.

Lawyers for Civil Rights dates back to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, when President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy called on American lawyers to step up in support of the struggle for equality.

The organization’s history can be traced through cases challenging discriminatory promotion practices in the Boston Police Department, segregation in public housing and immigration arrests in and around Massachusetts courthouses.

For inspiration, Espinoza-Madrigal looks to personal mentors who lived through the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Some of them, he said, marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965, when police officers brutally beat civil rights demonstrators.

He thinks about what they would tell him “about the role lawyers and courts play in safeguarding freedoms and dignity.”

“When I think about the challenges we’re facing today, it’s important for us to remember that progress is possible,” he said. “It requires us to think creatively and to have tremendous resilience in the face of adversity.”

Kimberly Budd, chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court

Chief Justice Kimberly Budd is about to complete her fifth year leading Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court. At age 59, she has more than a decade until mandatory retirement.

When Budd was sworn in as chief justice in 2020, she was the youngest person to take the oath in more than a century. She’s also the first Black woman to serve as chief justice. In that role, she serves as the leader of Massachusetts’ court system, leading not only its highest court but also overseeing the entire judiciary branch.

Speaking to members of the Massachusetts bar recently, Budd highlighted some of the ways the courts are coming into the modern age. The system has invested in upgraded WiFi in all its courthouses and piloted digital signage in the Chelsea District Court, she noted.

Following her address, Budd was asked about the ways the courts are working to maintain public confidence in the judiciary. She pointed to efforts to make the system more accessible, including for those who don’t have lawyers, and also the relaunch of the judicial evaluation process, which was suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic.

That process allows jurors, lawyers and court staff to offer feedback on judges.

“We’re constantly looking for ways to improve. We’re not staying static,” she said.

In 2025, Budd authored the court’s decision upholding the legality of the hotly debated MBTA Communities Law, which requires communities served by the T to zone for new housing. The court also heard several other high-profile cases, like Karen Read’s double jeopardy appeal and the bar advocate work stoppage that plunged the state’s trial courts into chaos.

Still, 2025 is not some outlier.

In 2024, the court ruled that life sentences without the possibility of parole were unconstitutional for “emerging adults,” a decision that suddenly made dozens of offenders eligible for parole for the first time and drew the ire of prosecutors. That year, the court also found that so-called “johns,” men accused of paying for sex at a high-end brothel, did not have a right to privacy.

But the SJC’s work doesn’t always draw headlines. The court also reviews every first-degree murder conviction in the state.

It decides on complicated legal questions facing Massachusetts, setting new ways of doing business in the state’s judicial system. Budd will be a key figure behind those decisions for years to come.

Leah Foley, U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts

The Trump administration wasted no time in January appointing veteran prosecutor Leah Foley as U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, bypassing the typical drawn-out confirmation process to place her in the position a day after the inauguration in January.

Foley’s appointment was expected after she was a finalist for the position during the first Trump term. She has spent nearly two decades working in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Massachusetts. Before taking over as the top federal prosecutor in the state, Foley worked in the office’s narcotics unit.

In a state dominated by the Democratic Party but under a Republican federal government, Foley has emerged as arguably the most prominent conservative voice in Massachusetts.

She publicly clashed in June with Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, a Democrat, who had called federal immigration agents a “secret police.” Foley said Wu’s remarks were “reckless and inflammatory.” In November, Foley blasted Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell, another Democrat, who had signaled her disappointment that the state was relatively powerless to take action against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Foley’s public comments on ICE have mirrored the steps her office has taken to carry out the Trump administration’s strict federal immigration policy.

Her office has also shown willingness to prosecute those accused of interfering with ICE operations. In October, it charged a woman accused of threatening ICE agents while they detained a person outside Malden District Court.

State-level politicians are lined up in opposition to Trump. But on matters of federal law, Foley and her office remain the most powerful voice.

Max Page, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association

Max Page is bracing for years of turbulence to come as he guides a 117,000-person educators’ union through federal cuts to education spending, the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education and attempts from the Trump administration to exert more influence over classrooms.

As president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, Page is responsible for advocating for the best interests of not only teachers, but essentially “any adult involved in a public school or college or university,” he said.

“This administration, as many previous authoritarian administrations, wants to control … public education, pre-K through higher ed,” Page, a University of Massachusetts Amherst professor, said in an interview. “This moment as head of this union … is a very fraught one.”

The last few years have been eventful for the 180-year-old union, which Page has led since 2022. It was one of the key backers of the state’s Fair Share Amendment, more commonly known as the “millionaire’s tax,” and led a campaign to eliminate the MCAS graduation requirement.

The Fair Share Amendment, which imposed a 4% tax on the portion of a person’s income above $1 million, has been a critical resource in defending against Trump’s cuts to education, Page said. With funds raised by the tax, the Legislature has directed more than $6 billion toward education and transportation.

Free community college, universal school meals and vocational schools have all been funded with Fair Share revenue, Page said.

He also suggested Massachusetts could go even further.

“If we’re doing all this great stuff and the wealthy are getting wealthier and they’re not leaving, then there’s clearly, there’s clearly more room to have people contribute their fair share,” he said.

To that end, Raise Up Massachusetts, an advocacy group the MTA worked with to pass Fair Share, is lobbying for a similar tax on corporations.

It’s part of a broader strategy for the union, Page said: going on offense. He wants the union not just to react to events as they happen, but to be proactive.

“As the state with the heritage of the best public education system in the country, we have to actually double down on that by raising the funds, necessarily, by strengthening workers’ rights, by strengthening how we teach, we actually help defeat a regime that is fundamentally wanting to control and undermine public education,” Page said.

Sometimes, though, the union’s influence comes up short.

The Massachusetts House of Representatives passed a bill in October aimed at improving student literacy that the MTA lobbied against. In a letter sent to legislators, Page said the union opposed the bill’s “one-size-fits-all approach to literacy instruction.”

Phillip Eng, Mass. transportation secretary and MBTA general manager

When Phillip Eng arrived in Boston in March 2023 as the new general manager of the MBTA, he inherited a transit system in crisis.

Disruptions were rampant on a train network plagued by outdated infrastructure and speed restrictions. In the year before Eng’s hire, trains had collided and caught fire, and a man was killed when a Red Line train pulled away with his arm caught in the door. Federal officials had outlined significant areas of concern with the safety of the T and demanded improvement.

Gov. Maura Healey said Eng’s hire was the “most important appointment” she had made to that point in her administration.

Two and a half years after Eng pledged an open and strategic plan to turn Greater Boston’s public transit around, riders can feel the improvement. After completing an aggressive surge of repairs last year, trains are running noticeably faster. And the T is on its way to meeting the federal government’s standards for improved safety.

Eng says the T’s goals now include bringing the system into a “state of good repair,” increasing the frequency and reliability of service and building out resiliency so that normal maintenance issues don’t become headaches for riders.

• Read more: Boston transit riders dream of new train lines. MBTA’s Phillip Eng has other priorities

Eng is popular among his ridership. In Healey’s 2025 State of the State address, mention of his success brought a crowd of lawmakers to their feet.

But Eng remains adamant that his work is unfinished. And for him, the work itself has now changed.

In addition to still serving in the highly demanding general manager’s role, Eng also leads the state’s Department of Transportation. Healey tapped him for the job in October after Transportation Secretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt stepped down.

Until Healey appoints a new secretary — a job Eng said he would open to holding “as long as it’s needed” — Eng will have tremendous influence over the commonwealth’s major transportation projects.

He stepped into the expanded role at a time when some of the state’s most pressing transportation projects have lost or risk losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.

In a period of great uncertainty, Healey is leaning even further on Eng’s leadership.

“There’s definitely a fantastic opportunity for me to streamline how transportation agencies work together in this dual role,” he added. “And I look forward to doing more of that.”

Vikas Enti, co-founder and CEO of Reframe Systems

Massachusetts faces a massive housing crunch. One report from the Healey administration found the state needs to build 222,000 homes over the next decade to meet demand.

Many communities once affordable to first-time buyers are now increasingly out of reach, driving outward migration of young adults that threatens to drain the state’s deep talent pool.

“Massachusetts cannot afford to wait for more housing supply,” the housing advocacy group Abundant Housing Massachusetts said earlier this year.

Enter Vikas Enti and his team at Reframe Systems.

In 2022, the former Amazon robotics executive partnered with two other former senior engineers of the retail giant to change the way factory-built homes are constructed. By automating a hefty portion of housing production, they aimed to reduce construction costs and increase production.

“We think there is a path to the future here where we increase housing supply at the right price points that really unlock our ability to build a profitable business, allow developers to be profitable and allow more people to get into homes they can afford,” Enti said.

Buildings and the construction industry account for more than a third of global carbon emissions. So Enti and his fellow Reframe co-founders also wanted to produce homes that require fewer materials and release fewer toxins into the environment.

The housing shortage and climate change are “two of the biggest challenges of our generation,” Enti said. He hopes Reframe can provide a path to solving both.

Robots take on the “repetitive, physically demanding” aspects of the projects, such as framing walls and ceilings, Enti said. Human workers can then focus on the finer touches, including wiring and plumbing.

“We’re working towards eventually automating 60 to 80% of factory tasks, blending robotic precision with human craftsmanship,” Enti said.

Reframe’s first factory is now open in Andover. Its first home, a 900-square-foot two-bedroom in Somerville, was completed last year. Two more Somerville triple-deckers — one meant for “multigenerational living” and one for affordable housing — are scheduled to be finished this month. Other homes are planned in Devens and Woburn.

A second production facility is planned in Southern California to support the rebuilding of areas of Los Angeles scorched by this year’s wildfires.

The company hopes to build 1 million homes over the next two decades, and estimates that doing so would require 800 factories nationwide.

Xiomara Albán DeLobato, chief of staff to Western Mass. Economic Development Council

Xiomara Albán DeLobato is building a bridge between the world of corporate business and communities in Western Massachusetts. In practice, that means she gets a lot of cups of coffee with key figures on both sides as she works to build relationships.

A first-generation American, DeLobato said her parents, both Ecuadorian immigrants, instilled in her a sense of resilience and determination. Before working for the Western Mass. Economic Development Council, DeLobato was a staffer to U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, D-1st District, and Springfield Mayor Dominic Sarno.

Her political experience, which included civic engagement work, has helped her in the business world. To create communities that people want to come to — and spend their money at local businesses — DeLobato said she tries to get to know each town and city on its own.

Using those relationships is a key part of balancing the needs of different communities, she said. Western Massachusetts is not a monolith. The hilltowns are far different from Springfield. But in many cases, there’s overlap in their needs.

“Rural Western Mass. has a lot of areas of disinvestment that need and require this level of focus and attention and care, the same as other parts of … Springfield or Holyoke or Greenfield,” DeLobato said.

Asked to point to recent accomplishments, DeLobato cited the Springfield WORKS Cliff Effect Pilot. The program supports those on government assistance programs to prevent what she described as a “vicious cycle” in which people avoid taking a raise or promotion, which would cost them benefits and leave them overall worse off.

As their income from work grows to match or exceed what they had been receiving in assistance, the benefits begin to fall away.

“Not only is this benefiting our participants, right, our workers who are dedicated and committed and able to do this, it’s also going to save the state a lot of tax dollars,” she said.

Looking ahead, DeLobato sees Western Massachusetts as a potential future home for quantum hardware production.

The Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center, based in Holyoke, will soon become what state officials touted as the nation’s first Quantum Computing Complex, thanks to a partnership between the Healey administration and QuEra Computing. DeLobato said the council is also working to create a quantum accelerator in Springfield.

“Not only are we working towards this business development, attraction and retention. It’s going to naturally, also organically, bring and also allow us to upskill a workforce,” she said, noting that Springfield Technical Community College is in the process of creating a Quantum Workforce Academy.

“Holyoke is going to see the build-out of the first quantum computer in Massachusetts,” she said.

A man armed with a knife was shot and killed by police in Springfield, Massachusetts, Saturday evening.

Springfield police and the Hampden District Attorney’s Office are investigating the police shooting that occurred after officers responded to a 911 call around 4:40 p.m. for a man exhibiting psychiatric behavior while carrying a knife in the 1100 block of Worcester Street in Indian Orchard.

Due to circumstances that remain under investigation, police say one officer fired their service pistol, striking the armed man. Medical aid was rendered on scene immediately, according to the police department, but the man died from his injuries on scene.

The Hampden District Attorney’s Office will determine the propriety of the shooting and whether or not the use of force was justified.

Police haven’t identified the officer who fired their weapon, or released the name of the man who died.

The investigation remains ongoing at this time, and police say additional information will be released when the it has concluded.

Massachusetts will no longer require prospective foster parents to affirm the sexual orientation and gender identity of the children they foster, following legal challenges and criticism from religious groups.

The change comes after the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed a federal lawsuit in September on behalf of two Massachusetts families, who claimed the requirement conflicted with their religious beliefs, according to a Fox News report. One couple had its foster care license revoked, while the other was threatened with revocation.

That same month, federal regulators with the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) sent a letter to Massachusetts criticizing the mandate as discriminatory and a violation of the First Amendment. The agency said it would open an investigation into the matter.

On Dec. 12, the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) updated its regulations, replacing language that required foster parents to affirm a child’s “sexual orientation and gender identity” with a requirement that they support a child’s “individual identity and needs.”

The shift comes amid a broader national debate, as states grapple with whether foster parents should be required to support children’s gender identity even when it conflicts with their personal or religious beliefs.

In a statement to GBH News, DCF Commissioner Staverne Miller said the agency’s top priority is ensuring children in foster care are placed in safe and supportive homes.

“We are also committed to ensuring that no one is prevented from applying or reapplying to be a foster parent because of their religious beliefs,” Miller said.

ADF lauded the change in a statement released Wednesday. 

“Massachusetts has told us that this new regulation will no longer exclude Christian and other religious families from foster care because of their commonly held beliefs that boys are boys and girls are girls,” said ADF Senior Counsel Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse. 

“Our clients—loving, caring foster families who have welcomed vulnerable children into their homes—as well as many other families affected by this policy, are eager to reapply for their licenses,” Widmalm-Delphonse continued. “This amendment is a step in the right direction and we commend Massachusetts officials for changing course. But this case will not end until we are positive that Massachusetts is committed to respecting religious persons and ideological diversity among foster parents.”