Lindsay Sabadosa Loves to Learn and Lives to Love
By Melissa Karen Sances | Photos by Nikki Gardner Photography
Published in Northampton Living | January 2026
As a kid growing up in Westfield, Lindsay Sabadosa found refuge in reading. Her grandfather was her guide through history. Every morning, he marched into the woods with a thermos of hot coffee and his current book, heading to a reading chair he left there for his daily pastime. When he returned home, he'd tell his granddaughter all about the adventures he'd witnessed: the Roman Empire, World War I, World War II. His passion was contagious. "He inspired me to read more," said Sabadosa, now the Massachusetts State Representative for the 1st Hampshire District. "Because the world is so fascinating, and there's so much to learn."
Sabadosa has lived a storied life, beginning her political career at nine years old when she organized a protest for her hometown library, her haven, which was being shuttered due to budget cuts. When she wasn't checking out her own literature, she volunteered there, reshelving books and setting up story hour for younger readers. She felt the loss of something she loved, her place of community, and her anger propelled her to call the mayor's office and let the local news know she would be marching with her neighbors. The library still closed, but a fire had been lit within her.
As a freshman in high school, Sabadosa took a required civics class with Richard Shephardson, who had a reputation for being a tough teacher. "That wasn't my experience," she said. "His class was so much fun. That was the first time I learned how politics plays a role in everything. Whether you like it or not, it affects you. Your experience living from one state to another can be different just because of politics." She went on to take all of Shephardson's classes, including an advanced placement (AP) class in government, and formed a chapter of the Young Democrats of Massachusetts in Westfield. At Wellesley College, she thought she would major in international relations, but during her junior year she was able to go abroad to Italy, where she honed her love of the language (she is fluent in Italian and French) and became captivated by the Italian storia - its story, or history.
After graduating college in 2001, the whole world changed on September 11. With few job prospects, Sabadosa pursued a fellowship to China, where she spent a year at the Ginling College of Nanjing University. As a trilingual fellow, she became a translator and moved to Scotland, where she got her master's in linguistics at the University of Edinburgh.
Her journey led her back to Italy, where she worked in health care marketing and opened her own translation firm, serving 300 clients worldwide. With her background in international relations and linguistics, she came to "deeply appreciate the way Italian lawyers write," she said. "They could be very verbose and eloquent, and we would joke sometimes that it took several pages to figure out where the period was. It was a puzzle to take that and translate it into English so that the meaning was consistent ... I enjoyed that immensely, solving those puzzles."
After feeling as though she had learned everything she could in that field, she returned to western Mass, where she raised her daughter, Kala, who is now 19 and beginning her own career as a violinist. "I keep saying to her to take advantage of every opportunity, especially when you're young, because they don't always come back," said Sabadosa. "Soak it all in. The world is beautiful and not scary and people are actually very nice."
That said, Sabadosa recognizes that there are challenges behind and ahead of her. Following the 2016 presidential election, she joined the Massachusetts Chapter of the Women's March on Washington, organizing buses to Washington, D.C. and Boston. "It was a hard road," she said. "There was this feeling of helplessness and the women's march offered a solution to that." The more involved she got, the more courage she felt. "I had to speak in public a lot more; the crowds got a lot bigger. There were moments of, 'Can I do this? Of course I can, because that's what I'm supposed to do."
During that time, Sabadosa built out her community and also became allies with Kala. "My relationship with my daughter changed from parenting a small child to this moment of her entering her teenage years," she said. "We ended up talking in very different ways, in very real ways. We have a very honest relationship with each other, which got cemented in this time of despair. We have each other's backs."
Sabadosa was elected to the State House of Representatives in 2018, becoming the first woman to represent the 1st Hampshire District. For the past seven years, she has worked tirelessly for her community. "I hope people think of me as somebody they can count on," she said. "I hope that I live up to that. We still have to take care of each other. What is the point of life if it's not being there for other people?"
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