Cheung was first elected to the Cambridge City Council in 2009 while pursuing a Masters in Public Administration at the
Harvard Kennedy School of Government and an MBA at the
MIT Sloan School of Management. Prior to returning to graduate school, Cheung earned a BS in Physics, BA in Economics and MS in Aerospace Engineering from
Stanford University. Following graduation, Cheung worked as a Senior Associate at Masthead Partners, a Cambridge-based venture capital firm focusing on digital media, mobile, and internet infrastructure. the only company to have successfully launched private explorers to space. Cheung ran an unsuccessful campaign as the Republican candidate for the
Virginia House of Delegates in 2005. Cheung lost a campaign in the
Democratic primary for
Lieutenant Governor of
Massachusetts in
2014. He had been endorsed by
The Boston Globe. On September 8, 2016, Cheung lost the
Democratic primary for the
Massachusetts State Senate in the
Second Middlesex district. Cheung announced he was not running for reelection in a statement released August 1, 2017. As a City Councillor, he advocated for
open data, Net Zero Zoning, composting and recycling programs. Cheung was a vocal critic of
Harvard University and
MIT laying off some workers and cutting hours of others. As City Councillor, he was an early supporter of the Harvard divestment from fossil fuel movement. Additionally, he showed his support for the Responsible Investment at Harvard when they campaigned to end Harvard's management of Argentina Timber Plantations. His top priorities included shifting the increased burden of property taxes to contractors and developers, completing the green line extension, and implementing universal pre-K. He also supports lifting the charter school cap and overhauling education reform by increasing the overall budget, as Massachusetts ranks 47th in spending on education as a percentage of the total budget. He also proposed anticipating the policy issues of the future, addressing driverless cars' impact on transportation, the
gig economy's impact on income inequality, and
Airbnb's impact on the housing market. == References ==