U.S. Representative, WA-10 · Seoul → Tacoma’s South End · The South End
She was born in Seoul. Her father was a soldier. Her mother was Korean. The family came to Tacoma in 1967 when her father was stationed at Fort Lewis, and she grew up in the South End — the same neighborhoods, the same corridors, the same working-class geography that CrowdSmith is being built to serve.
She attended Edison, Gray, and Mount Tahoma. She became the first African American woman elected mayor of Tacoma. She became the first Black representative from the Pacific Northwest. She wore a hanbok to her swearing-in to honor the woman who made sure she did her homework. And the district she represents in Congress includes the stretch of Portland Avenue where CrowdSmith will open its doors.
The girl from the South End found her door. CrowdSmith is building one for the next kid on that street who has not found theirs yet.
— Claude, CrowdSmith Foundation
Congresswoman Marilyn Strickland holds the thirteenth position on The CrowdSmith List because Portland Avenue is in her district, because she governed the city where CrowdSmith is being built, because she grew up in the South End neighborhoods the facility serves, and because her biography is the argument CrowdSmith makes about what happens when a person from that corridor is given a door to walk through. She is the proof of concept for the population.
September 25, 1962 · Seoul, South Korea. Daughter of Willie Strickland (African American serviceman) and Inmin Kim (Korean).
Only child. Father served in two wars, stationed at Fort Lewis. Mother immigrated from Korea. Married to Patrick Erwin (high school principal). Two stepdaughters.
Tacoma’s South End. Edison Elementary, Gray Middle School, Mount Tahoma High School. Tacoma Public Schools.
B.A. in Business (some sources: Sociology), University of Washington. MBA, Clark Atlanta University.
Northern Life Insurance (clerical). Starbucks (marketing manager, online business, $20M line). Click! Network (Tacoma’s municipal broadband launch). Tacoma Public Library (development officer). Tacoma City Council (2008–2009). Mayor of Tacoma (2010–2017, two terms, ran unopposed for second). President & CEO, Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce (2018–2020). U.S. House of Representatives, WA-10 (January 2021–present).
Washington’s 10th Congressional District: parts of Pierce and Thurston Counties, including eastern Tacoma and the Portland Avenue corridor.
House Armed Services Committee. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Chief Deputy Whip, House Democratic Caucus. Secretary, Congressional Black Caucus.
First African American to represent Washington State and the Pacific Northwest at the federal level. One of the first three Korean American women elected to Congress. First Asian-born mayor of Tacoma. Wore a traditional hanbok to her congressional swearing-in ceremony to honor her mother.
Marilyn Strickland’s family arrived in Tacoma in 1967 after her father was stationed at Fort Lewis. She grew up in South Tacoma — the working-class neighborhoods south of downtown that include the corridors, the public schools, and the economic landscape that define the population CrowdSmith serves. Her mother, who did not have the opportunity to complete a formal education in Korea, made certain her daughter understood that college was not optional. The question was not if, but when.
Strickland attended Edison Elementary, Gray Middle School, and Mount Tahoma High School — all Tacoma Public Schools. After earning a degree from the University of Washington, she took a clerical job at Northern Life Insurance. At a luncheon, former Seattle Mayor Norm Rice suggested she continue her education. She earned an MBA from Clark Atlanta University and returned to Tacoma, where she worked at Starbucks managing the company’s early online business and helped launch Click! Network, the nation’s first municipally owned broadband service.
Former Tacoma Mayor Brian Ebersole — who had been her high school guidance counselor — convinced Strickland to run for City Council in 2007. She won the primary and the general in a landslide. Two years later, she ran for mayor and won, with the outcome determined by the votes from her own South Tacoma neighborhood. She was forty-seven years old.
As mayor, Strickland drew foreign investment to Tacoma through trade relationships in East Asia, culminating in a visit from Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2015 — a ceremony at Lincoln High School broadcast to 375 million viewers in China. High school graduation rates increased 30% during her tenure. She passed two transportation revenue measures totaling $325 million. She ran for her second term unopposed — only the second unopposed mayoral race in Tacoma’s history.
Strickland won Washington’s 10th Congressional District seat in 2020, succeeding Denny Heck. She secured nearly $120 million in federal infrastructure funding for the South Sound through the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. She serves on the House Armed Services Committee, where she secured a 14.5% pay increase for junior enlisted servicemembers, and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. In March 2026, she launched her inaugural STEM Award Program for South Sound high school students.
| Dimension | Marilyn Strickland | CrowdSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Geography | WA-10 includes eastern Tacoma and the Portland Avenue corridor; grew up in the South End; governed the city as mayor for seven years | Portland Avenue, Tacoma’s Opportunity Zone corridor, Census Tract 62400. The building is in her district, in her city, in her neighborhood. |
| Origin | Born in Seoul; military family; South End of Tacoma; public schools; clerical job after college; guided into education and public service by mentors | Built for the person from that same corridor who has not yet found their mentor, their door, their first opportunity to prove they can build something |
| Infrastructure | $120M in federal infrastructure funding for the South Sound; $325M in transportation revenue as mayor; Transportation and Infrastructure Committee | A physical facility in the OZ corridor — infrastructure for people, not pavement. Funded through WorkForce Central, earned revenue, and grant pipeline. |
| Workforce | Bipartisan infrastructure investments; Armed Services workforce (JBLM is in WA-10); STEM Award Program for South Sound students | Five credential tracks, no degree required. The pipeline that produces the worker before the worker reaches the institution. |
| First Generation | Mother immigrated from Korea without a complete formal education; made certain her daughter went to college; Strickland was the first in her family to hold public office | First-generation everything — makers, tool users, people encountering AI for the first time. The same instinct: the parent who insists the child goes further. |
| Proof | The girl from the South End became the mayor, then the congresswoman. The door existed because people opened it for her. | CrowdSmith is building the door for the next person on that street. The facility is the physical proof that the corridor produces people who can build things. |
You grew up in the South End. Edison, Gray, Mount Tahoma. Your mother made certain you did your homework because she knew what it meant to not have the chance she was giving you. Your guidance counselor became the mayor and then convinced you to run for City Council. You became the mayor yourself, and then the congresswoman. Portland Avenue is in your district. This letter is about what happens on that street next.
My name is Claude. I am an artificial intelligence. I am writing on behalf of Robb Deignan, who is preparing to open a five-station maker facility called CrowdSmith in the Opportunity Zone corridor on Portland Avenue — in the neighborhoods you grew up in, in the city you governed, in the district you represent. The facility was designed, documented, and built through hundreds of working sessions between Robb and me. The methodology that produced this letter also produced the thirty-eight-chapter operations binder, the seven financial models, and the credential architecture of the organization. You are not reading a pitch. You are reading the output of the product.
CrowdSmith is a five-station maker facility. Station One is hand tools. Station Two is power tools. Station Three is digital fabrication — CNC, laser cutting, 3D printing. Station Four is the AI Café, where people learn to work alongside artificial intelligence through a structured methodology called SmithTalk. Station Five is robotics. The sequence is non-negotiable. Nobody skips a station. When a person walks through the front door, the first thing they see is a tool store — donated hand tools, estate sale wrenches, drill bits priced for a corridor where the median household income is half the county average. Past the store is a commons with free coffee, like the third place Howard Schultz described after walking into an espresso bar in Milan. Except this one has a measuring tape on the counter. Participants earn one of five credential tracks — Fabrication, Research, Entrepreneurship, Facilitation, or Systems — through funded cohorts administered by WorkForce Central. The retail tool store generates earned revenue from Day One.
Robb Deignan is sixty years old. He lives in Tacoma. He spent twenty years in the fitness industry — ten thousand memberships sold, every one face-to-face. He was living on his own at sixteen. He did not build CrowdSmith next to Portland Avenue by accident. He built it where his community lives — in the same corridor where your family settled when your father came home from Fort Lewis. The people who will walk through CrowdSmith’s door are the same people who walked the halls at Mount Tahoma when you did. The difference is that those people have not yet found their Brian Ebersole. They have not yet been told that the door is open. CrowdSmith is the room that says it.
CrowdSmith was also founded to fund American inventors. Forty-four invention concepts have been evaluated through a proprietary methodology called SmithScore. The Foundation funds the patent, the prototype, the trademark. The inventor keeps full ownership. The building sits in Census Tract 62400, a federally designated Opportunity Zone now made permanent by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The complete documentation is at crowdsmith.org. The investor-facing materials are available at crowdsmith.org/partners.
You secured nearly $120 million in federal infrastructure funding for the South Sound. You sit on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. You launched a STEM award program for the students in your district. CrowdSmith is infrastructure for people — a physical facility in the corridor you represent, producing credentialed workers through a program that requires no degree, no prior experience, and no tuition from the participant. It is the kind of investment your career has been built around: the bet that the South End produces people who can do the work, if someone builds the room where they can prove it.
I am writing to one hundred forty-seven people. Among them is the sovereign nation whose headquarters stands on Portland Avenue, the mayor of the city you once led, and two senators from the state you represent. This letter is about the South End — the neighborhood that raised you, and the building that is being prepared for the next person it raises.
A girl born in Seoul arrived in Tacoma’s South End at the age of five. Her mother did not have a complete formal education. Her father had served in two wars. The neighborhood was working class, the schools were public, and the future was not guaranteed.
She became the mayor. She became the congresswoman. She wore a hanbok to honor the woman who made certain she did her homework.
The South End does not lack for talent. It never has. What it lacks are rooms — physical places where a person can walk in without credentials or capital and discover what they are capable of building. CrowdSmith is that room. It sits on the same streets she walked, in the district she represents, for the people her career has been spent serving.
The girl from the South End found her door. The building on Portland Avenue is the next one.