Eric Garcetti

Eric Michael Garcetti is the 42nd and current Mayor of Los Angeles. He was first elected in the 2013 election and won reelection in 2017. He is the city’s first elected Jewish mayor, its second consecutive White Mexican American mayor, as well as at age 42 at the time of his inauguration, the youngest in over 100 years.

About Eric Garcetti in brief

Summary Eric GarcettiEric Michael Garcetti is the 42nd and current Mayor of Los Angeles. He was first elected in the 2013 election and won reelection in 2017. A former member of the Los Angeles City Council, Garcetti served as council president from 2006 to 2012. He is the city’s first elected Jewish mayor, its second consecutive White Mexican American mayor, as well as at age 42 at the time of his inauguration, the youngest in over 100 years. Garcetti’s paternal grandfather, Salvador, was born in Parral, Chihuahua, Mexico. His maternal grandfather, Harry Roth, founded and ran the clothing brand Louis Roth Clothes. He met his future wife while they were both studying as Rhodes Scholars at The Queen’s College, Oxford. He later studied for a PhD in ethnicity and nationalism at the London School of Economics. He has served on the California board of Human Rights Watch, and currently serves on the advisory board for Young Storytellers, an arts education nonprofit organization based in L.A. He helped found Los Angeles Land Trust, the nation’s most far-reaching municipal building ordinances. In 2004, he authored a stormwater bond which sought to clean up the city’s waterways. He also authored two LEED-certified building mandates that require all commercial buildings to be built to the LEED standard, and the second mandates that more than 50,000 sq ft of commercial buildings be built. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University in 1992 as a John Jay Scholar. His academic work focused on ethnic conflict and nationalism in Southeast Asia and Northeast Africa.

He received a Masters of International Affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, graduating in 1993. He served as a visiting instructor of international affairs at the University of Southern California and an assistant professor of diplomacy and world affairs at Occidental College. In 2005, he was elected to the City Council District 13, narrowly defeating former city council member Michael Woo. He ran for the open seat and was elected in 2001 and was re-elected again in 2005 and 2009. While in high school, he was a member of Junior State of America, a national civic engagement and political debate organization for students. He was one of the first elected officials in Los Angeles to hold office hours each month, where constituents can meet with him face-to-face. He helps more than 1,500 local residents learn about the governmental process by hosting Government and Government 101 courses throughout the city. His father, Massimo “Max” Garcetti, was murdered by hanging during the Mexican Revolution. His paternal grandmother, Juanita Iberri, was. born in Arizona, one of 19 children born to an immigrant father from Sonora, Mexico and an Arizona-born mother whose father and mother were both Mexican. His maternal grandparents were from Russian Jewish immigrant families. He attended elementary school at UCLA Lab School, formerly University Elementary School; and middle and high school at Harvard-Westlake School.