Mayor Michael Garcia Joins 10th Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative Class to Strengthen Local Government and Advance Resident Priorities

46 mayors from 15 countries, who together lead over 22 million people, selected for program built on a decade of improving how municipalities serve two top City of Santa Fe officials begin participation in August - carrying coursework into city hall's core

Mayor Michael Garcia today announced being selected as one of the 46 mayors from 15 countries for the tenth class of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative. Through the nine-month professional management program Mayor Michael Garcia, alongside two top City of Santa Fe officials, Andrea Phillips Deputy City Manager and Peter Olson Communications Director, will begin in August and will gain strategies to improve how local government works and move residents' chief priorities forward.

"I am deeply honored to be selected as a member of the 10th Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative class. This is an incredible opportunity to learn from some of the nation's and the World's leading experts in municipal leadership while collaborating with mayors from around the globe who are tackling many of the same challenges we face in Santa Fe. Every lesson, strategy and best practice I gain through this program will be brought home to strengthen our local government and improve the quality of life for our residents. Santa Fe has a proud history of innovation and community leadership, and I am committed to using this experience to help build a more responsive, effective and resilient city for everyone who calls Santa Fe home." Mayor Michael J. Garcia said.

The flagship Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative is at the center of more than 10 years of work led by Bloomberg Philanthropies through its Government Innovation program to strengthen mayoral leadership and local government across the globe. Today, it is where the world's mayors come to learn-and to lead. Michael Garcia will join them.

Established with Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School, and housed at the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard, the Initiative will have now served 447 mayors-including eight in ten of America's big-city mayors and nine of England's mayoral strategic authorities-alongside over 3,000 municipal chiefs.

"Mayors sit at the first and last mile of every major problem we face, and we built the Government Innovation program to ensure they have the capacity required to lead," said James Anderson, who leads the Government Innovation program at Bloomberg Philanthropies. "The Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative is at its center, and in a moment that demands more from public leadership than ever, this class will have that world of support behind them. We look forward to these mayors putting it to work, and all that their city halls will do."

Through the Initiative, Mayor Michael Garcia will work alongside Harvard faculty, policy experts, veteran managers, and fellow mayors-periodically in classrooms, virtual sessions, and in the field-beginning with a multi-day convening in New York City this week. Participants learn to organize teams around outcomes, ground decisions in evidence, and collaborate across departments and sectors-applying lessons directly to the issues at home, from housing and affordability to economic growth, public safety, and emergency response.

Once the coursework ends, City of Santa Fe remains eligible for more: professional education for senior officials in economic development, human resources, procurement, and civic engagement; a Bloomberg Harvard City Hall Fellow, placed for up to two years on a priority the mayor sets; and research and instructional material developed across the program's first decade.

"Leading a city is among the hardest jobs in public service anywhere as the demands on mayors-and the complex challenges they face-continue to grow," said Jorrit de Jong, Director of the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University and Emma Bloomberg Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at Harvard Kennedy School. "Meeting those challenges requires city halls to continually strengthen how they work, and with Michael R. Bloomberg's unwavering backing, we built the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative to help them do just that-and every mayor teaches us in return. With a decade of that insight and research behind this tenth class, we expect their city halls to deliver at home and push the program's work-and the field itself-further still."

The tenth class of mayors represents 28 U.S. and 18 international cities, home to more than 22 million residents. They include: Mayor Dorcey Applyrs of Albany, NY; Mayor Ron Bernal of Antioch, CA; Mayor Sean Ryan of Buffalo, NY; Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui of Cambridge, MA; Mayor Stephen M. Morris of Concord, NC; Mayor Shenise Turner-Sloss of Dayton, OH; Mayor Mary Sheffield of Detroit, MI; Mayor Sharon Tucker of Fort Wayne, IN; Mayor John Horhn of Jackson, MS; Mayor James Solomon of Jersey City, NJ; Mayor Christal Watson of Kansas City, KS; Mayor Jaime Arroyo of Lancaster, PA; Mayor Eileen Higgins of Miami, FL; Mayor John Ewing of Omaha, NE; Mayor Keith Wilson of Portland, OR; Mayor Marsha Judkins of Provo, UT; Mayor Angela Birney of Redmond, WA; Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones of San Antonio, TX; Mayor Michael Garcia of Santa Fe, NM; Mayor Van Johnson of Savannah, GA; Mayor Jake Wilson of Somerville, MA; Mayor James Mueller of South Bend, IN; Mayor Lisa Brown of Spokane, WA; Mayor Kaohly Her of St. Paul, MN; Mayor Christina Fugazi of Stockton, CA; Mayor Sharon Owens of Syracuse, NY; Mayor Anders Ibsen of Tacoma, WA; Mayor Spencer Duncan of Topeka, KS; Mayor Maude Marquis-Bissonnette of Gatineau, Canada; Mayor Sophie Barker of Dunedin, New Zealand; Mayor Mahé Drysdale of Tauranga, New Zealand; Mayor Sam Nujoma of Khomas Region, Namibia; Mayor Fatiha El Moudni of Rabat, Morocco; Mayor Richard Shakespeare of Dublin, Ireland; Mayor Stephan Keller of Düsseldorf, Germany; Mayor Mathias De Clercq of Ghent, Belgium; Mayor Carlos Moedas of Lisbon, Portugal; Mayor Helen Godwin of West of England, UK; Mayor Tomislav Tomašević of Zagreb, Croatia; Mayor Carlos Fernando Galán of Bogotá, Colombia; Mayor Agustín Iglesias of Independencia, Chile; Mayor Andrew Swaby of Kingston, Jamaica; Mayor Felipe Alessandri of Lo Barnechea, Chile; Mayor Esteban Allasino of Luján de Cuyo, Argentina; Mayor Sebastián Sichel of Ñuñoa, Chile; and Mayor Ramón Lanús of San Isidro, Argentina.

Alumni of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative include Pete Buttigieg, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation and mayor of South Bend, IN; Keisha Lance Bottoms, former Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement and mayor of Atlanta, GA; Mayor Muriel Bowser of the District of Columbia; Andy Burnham, Member of Parliament for Makerfield and former Mayor of Greater Manchester, UK; Mayor Misty Buscher of Springfield, IL; Mayor William Cogswell of Charleston, SC; Uruguay Vice President Carolina Cosse and former mayor of Montevideo, Uruguay; Mayor Patrick Farrell of Huntington, WV; John Giles, former mayor of Mesa, AZ; Claudia López, former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia; Mayor Tiffany O'Donnell of Cedar Rapids, IA; Mayor Brandon Scott of Baltimore, MD; and Mayor Paul TenHaken of Sioux Falls, SD.

The flagship Initiative has also informed parallel efforts worldwide. The most recent is the Bloomberg LSE European City Leadership Initiative , whose inaugural class included 30 mayors and 60 senior officials from 17 countries.

Through these leadership programs, City of Santa Fe enters Bloomberg Philanthropies' broader Government Innovation portfolio and global community of practice, tens of thousands of mayors and municipal officials strong, who draw on each other's work to better the lives of the hundreds of millions of residents they collectively serve.

About Bloomberg Philanthropies:

Bloomberg Philanthropies invests in 700 cities and 150 countries around the world to ensure better, longer lives for the greatest number of people. The organization focuses on creating lasting change in five key areas: the Arts, Education, Environment, Government Innovation, and Public Health. Bloomberg Philanthropies encompasses all of Michael R. Bloomberg's giving, including his foundation, corporate, and personal philanthropy as well as Bloomberg Associates, a philanthropic consultancy that advises cities around the world. In 2025, Bloomberg Philanthropies distributed $4.3 billion. For more information, please visit bloomberg.org , sign up for our newsletter , or follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn , YouTube , Threads , Facebook , and X .

About the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative:
The flagship Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative is at the center of more than 10 years of work led by Bloomberg Philanthropies to strengthen mayoral leadership and local government across the globe. Established with Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School, housed at the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard, the Initiative will have now served 447 mayors and over 3,000 senior municipal officials, including 8 in 10 of America's big city mayors and 9 of England's mayoral strategic authorities. Today, it is where many of the world's most accomplished mayors come to learn-and to lead. For more information, please visit cityleadership.harvard.edu or visit us on LinkedIn and X .

About the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University:
Founded in 2021 with Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University serves a global community committed to improving public management, leadership, and governance. The Center's cross-Harvard collaboration unites expertise focused on cities across disciplines and schools to produce research, train leaders, and develop resources for global use. The center is designed to have widespread impact on the future of cities, where more than half of the world's people now live, by informing and inspiring local government leaders, scholars, students, and others who work to improve the lives of residents around the world. For more information, please visit cities.harvard.edu or follow us on Instagram , LinkedIn , and X .

MEDIA CONTACT:

City of Santa Fe

Peter Olson

[email protected]

Bloomberg Philanthropies:

Sam Fuld, [email protected]

Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative:

Jessicah Pierre, [email protected]