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LANSING -- "I knew that when it came to a degree, it needed to be in something I was interested in, almost like I'd figure the rest out later," said Sen. Mary Cavanagh, D-Redford Township, who tried many degree paths in college, including biology, teaching and marine biology before settling on anthropology.
Cavanagh is among the state's legislators whose present careers seem a long distance from what they expected to be doing when they were undergraduates or early in their working life.
"I learned about evolution when it comes to old cities, humans and culture and how people developed into the people we are today, either physically, culturally or linguistically," Cavanagh said.
Cavanagh comes from a line of politicians. Her grandfather, Jerome Cavanagh, was the mayor of Detroit from 1962 to 1970. Her father, Phil Cavanagh, was a state lawmaker from 2011 to 2015.
The senator said she was able to see firsthand what being in politics meant and how much time it consumes.
"I decided a long time ago that I didn't want to be in politics," Cavanagh said.
Wanting to contribute to her community, during college Cavanagh worked in the Detroit Public Schools on increasing graduation rates as an AmeriCorps member and also for a nonprofit organization that served the most vulnerable populations in the state, such as homeless people.
"In every space that I worked in, I saw the lack of funding, the lack of support and the lack of priority at the state level," Cavanagh said.
After graduating from Wayne State University amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Cavanagh recognized a need to act.
"I decided that it was going to be a young Irish Hispanic American woman that can pull up a seat at the table and have some of these really hard conversations that people weren't having," Cavanagh said.
Cavanagh said her education in anthropology helps her reach across the aisle in the Legislature.