A 1994 master of human development with St Mary’s graduate center on Park Ave in Minneapolis Minnesota and Carleton College graduate in 1972, as a modern dance educator in the German expressionist school, Linda Lee Soderstrom is a servant leader and unique contributor.
She was a dually licensed Hennepin county daycare, foster care and therapeutic adoptive mother for medically fragile preschool aged children prenatally exposed to alcohol and other drugs, who adopted one of the 60 placements she cared for. Linda was always a Jill-of-all-trades who has been organizing in the fair housing community since 2015. In that community they used their voices and grass roots power together to object to the housing displacements of over 2,500 extremely low -income Crossroads residents in suburban Richfield. These displaced residents elected her their lead representative in HJC ‘s class action filed as Soderstrom vs. Soderberg. There was resulting a new precedent set in disparate impact concerning protected classes in that case. Linda has continued ever since advocating more broadly in the Twin Cities metropolitan area and in rural Southeast Minnesota.
Linda has been displaced three times in the last decade despite being a Section 8 housing choice voucher holder (HCV). Undaunted, she is a work group member of Hope for Homes in Winona which sits in its criminal justice coordinating council (CJCC) and that grew out of the Minnesota Housing Partnerships’ (MHP) 8th rural small cities institute.
In recent past she was an inaugural member of the National low-income housing coalitions’ (NLIHC) Tenant Leader Cohort (TLC) which hand carried their vetted Tenant Bill of Rights proposals to both the Biden White House and HUD. She was honored in 2025 to be nominated as a tenant leader among many in our nation for NLIHC’s March 2026 annual conference in Washington DC and has presented on ‘Invisible Disabilities’ at the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) 2025 Leadership summit by hybrid in Cincinnati, Ohio. Retired NCH and freedom from the streets/no more streets board member, she has been key in forming We Are Your Neighbors, MICAH’s small but mighty speakers bureau. Linda serves on MICAH’s board and volunteers on staff.
She serves currently on the financial and strategic planning subcommittees of this board, enjoys co-chairing a Section 8 Homeownership listening circle styled committee at NCH and bringing her own unique lived experiences and expertise to the Lived Experience Advocacy Network (LEAN), The River Valleys Continuum of Care (COC) and Minnesota’s Homes for All Coalition in which she supports the community engagement team in its new 2026 weekly story sharing narrative lab. (Open to All). These long-form shares will be lifted as testimony in brevity, yet with potent impact.
She has completed her licensed practical nursing degree (LPN-2007) and health unit coordinator studies (HUC-2010) at Southeast technical college (MSCST) in Winona, and then her certified peer recovery specialist (CPRS) hours via WEcovery in Mankato (pending 2020) and forensic endorsement continuing education units at St Paul College. (CPRS-FE-2024). At 76, Linda Lee hopes to continue as a lifelong learner.