When first elected at the age of 29, Mayor Pete Buttigieg (boot-edge-edge) of South Bend became one of America’s youngest mayors. The city’s 32nd mayor, he was sworn into office on January 1, 2012 and re-elected for a second term of office on November 3, 2016. As chief executive of a city of about 100,000 residents, Pete is responsible for the city workforce of over 1,000 employees and an annual budget over $300 million, and is working to retain and attract businesses, improve schools and neighborhoods, enhance safety — all the things mayors strive to do, using cutting-edge methods and best practices.
A Rhodes Scholar, Pete studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Oxford and holds a bachelor’s degree in History and Literature from Harvard. Buttigieg was born in South Bend and grew up in the Northwest Side and North Shore Triangle neighborhoods. He attended St. Joseph’s High School in South Bend. Prior to becoming mayor, Pete worked for McKinsey in economic development, energy, retail, and logistics.
Buttigieg is President of the Indiana Urban Mayors Caucus, and serves on the boards of the Indiana Association of Cities and Towns and the Truman National Security Project. Recently he was named the 2015 co-recipient of the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Awards.
In 2013, he was named Mayor of the Year by GovFresh.com, sharing the honor with former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and was called “the most interesting mayor you’ve never heard of” by the Washington Post. An officer in U.S. Navy Reserve, Pete took a leave of absence to serve in Afghanistan during a seven-month deployment in 2014, earning the Joint Service Commendation Medal for his counterterrorism work.
Pete is an active musician: he plays piano and guitar, and has performed with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra. He lives in the same neighborhood where he grew up and is restoring a formerly vacant home there.
