Mayor Eric Garcetti joins CGEP as a DVF. Eric Garcetti is a committed public servant, educator, and environmental activist. After serving twelve years as a Los Angeles city councilmember, including six as City Council President, Garcetti was elected as the 42nd Mayor of the City of Los Angeles in 2013 as the youngest mayor in Los Angeles history, and he was re-elected in 2017 with the widest margin ever recorded in his city. During his mayoralty, Garcetti led Los Angeles through crisis, charted a bold green future, and launched record investments in infrastructure. Under his watch, Los Angeles was named the best run city in America by the What Works Cities initiative of Bloomberg Philanthropies. Named Public Official of the Year in 2019 by Governing Magazine, Garcetti brought a strong management culture of innovation, equity, and accountability to the 41 city departments he oversaw. He passed ten balanced budgets and left the city with a record budget surplus.
Garcetti raised the minimum wage, made community college free, and cut city business taxes, leading to a 27% reduction in poverty and a record number of new businesses. He brought an unprecedented focus on equity to city government, helping raise incomes of Black and Latino residents by 44% and 43% respectively, initiating model local-hire programs, and launching the nation’s largest guaranteed basic income program. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Garcetti was praised for leading Los Angeles’ aggressive response, building the largest testing and vaccination sites in the world and adopting many of the earliest public health protections while keeping critical sectors of the economy going.
Garcetti earned a B.A. at Columbia College, Columbia University as a John Jay Scholar and an M.I.A. at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. After graduating, he was selected as a Rhodes Scholar, studying at The Queen’s College, Oxford and the London School of Economics and Political Science. During 12 years as an Intelligence Officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve Component, Garcetti served under the Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet and the Defense Intelligence Agency, retiring in 2017 as a Lieutenant. Garcetti was selected as Rockefeller Next Generation Leadership Fellow, an inaugural Asia 21 Fellow of the Asia Society, a Young Fellow of the French-American Foundation, a Rodel Fellow at the Aspen Institute, and a Reboot Fellow. In 2005, he was awarded the New Frontier Award given each year by the Kennedy family and Kennedy Library to a young elected official who embodies President Kennedy’s vision of service.
