History was made on Tuesday as 56-year-old Ms. Lori Lightfoot was elected to become the first black female Mayor of Chicago, replacing Rahm Emmanuel. Lightfoot also will be the city’s first openly gay mayor.

Ms. Lightfoot who has never held elective office easily won the race, overwhelming a better-known and longtime politician, Toni Preckwinkle in the elections, turning her outsider status into an asset in a city with a history of corruption and insider dealings.

For Chicago, Ms. Lightfoot’s win signaled a notable shift in the mood of voters and a rejection of an entrenched political culture that has more often rewarded insiders and dismissed unknowns.

For many voters, the notion that someone with no political ties might become Mayor of Chicago seemed an eye-opening counterpoint to a decades-old, often-repeated mantra about the city’s political order – “We don’t want nobody, nobody sent”.

Ms. Lightfoot’s rise was unexpected only weeks ago, when 13 other candidates were vying to run for the mayor of America’s third-largest city, many of them with decades of experience in Chicago politics.

Ms. Lightfoot is a lawyer who has served in appointed positions, including head of the Chicago Police Board and leader of a task force which issued a damaging report on relations between the Chicago Police and black residents.

Ms. Lightfoot had spoken frequently about equity and inclusion, of redistributing city funds to spread the prosperity of downtown and the North Side to neighborhoods that have been neglected.

“It’s unacceptable, the condition of our communities on the South and West Sides. The only way we are going to carve a new path for the city, to take us in a direction that our communities don’t continue to be resource-starved is to vote for change,”  she said during the campaigns.

She has also vowed to significantly change the Chicago Police Department by increasing training and reducing officer misconduct.