Leading at the Frontline: What Business Can Learn from How Big City Mayors Engage the Grassroots

Four current and recent mayors from iconic urban cities, namely, Boston, Hartford, Louisville, and Knoxville, discuss how they empowered frontline constituencies to lead change in politicized multi-stakeholder environments with competing claims and power structures. Michelle Wu was the first woman and Asian American to be elected Mayor of Boston. Since taking office in 2022, she has worked with diverse constituencies and stakeholders to address significant disparities in housing needs, replacing segregated living patterns with integrated and balanced living patterns, transforming racially and ethnically concentrated areas of poverty into areas of opportunity. Madeline Rogero was the first woman to be elected Mayor of Knoxville and served two terms from 2011-2019 dedicating her efforts to promote the local economy, build a thriving downtown, and a greener Knoxville. She also served on a task force to advise President Obama on climate preparedness and resilience building. Luke Bronin, currently in his second term as Mayor of Hartford, led the city through the biggest fiscal crisis in the city’s history. Mayor Bronin worked to position Hartford as a center of innovation and establish Hartford a leader in environmental stewardship. One of his earliest initiatives was the Youth Service Corps launched to address the city’s youth unemployment crisis. Greg Fischer has just completed his third 4-year term as Mayor of Louisville. In his tenure, Louisville experienced an economic renaissance, adding 83,000 jobs and 3,000 new businesses, with unprecedented investments in affordable housing. Louisville was named an International Model City of Compassion four times. Mayor Fischer was elected by the mayors of America to be president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in 2020 and named as the most innovative mayor in America by Politico in 2016. These four proven public leaders will share personal reflections on what it means to be a courageous strategic leader when every action is subject to public scrutiny and even good deeds have staunch critics.