Eric Garcetti is a leader, educator, diplomat, and public servant who has spent his career bringing people together to build healthier, more just, and more prosperous communities. He currently serves as Ambassador for Global Climate Diplomacy for C40 Cities, representing the world’s cities in international climate negotiations and helping advance urban leadership on the climate crisis.
From 2023 to 2025, Garcetti served as U.S. Ambassador to India, leading one of America’s largest diplomatic missions in the world’s most populous country. In that role, he helped strengthen ties between the world’s two largest democracies across trade, education, visas, defense cooperation, health, and people-to-people exchange.
A fourth-generation Angeleno, Garcetti previously spent more than two decades in elected office in Los Angeles, where he built a reputation as a progressive, results-oriented leader. He served for 12 years on the Los Angeles City Council, including six years as City Council President, authoring landmark legislation such as the Equal Benefits Ordinance, the Anti-Big Box Ordinance, and Proposition O, then the largest local clean water bond in the country. He also helped lead efforts to fully fund libraries, expand affordable housing, protect neighborhood identity, and triple the number of parks and open spaces in the communities he represented.
In 2013, Garcetti was elected the youngest mayor in Los Angeles history, and in 2017 was re-elected by the widest margin in the city’s history. As mayor, he led Los Angeles through a period of record job growth, record low crime, record business starts, and the largest budget surplus in city history. His administration helped raise the minimum wage, expand paid sick leave, widen access to college, advance ambitious climate goals, achieve gender equity on the city’s commissions, and secure Los Angeles’s successful bid to host the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. His emphasis on accountability and innovation helped Los Angeles earn recognition as the best-run city in America by What Works Cities, and he was named Public Official of the Year by Governing magazine.
Garcetti was elected Chair of C40 Cities in 2019 and continues to work at the intersection of climate, democracy, and public leadership. He serves on several boards, including the Bipartisan Policy Center and the Global Diplomacy Council of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and has taught politics, international relations, and diplomacy at USC and Occidental College. He also served for 12 years as an intelligence officer in the United States Navy.
He earned his degrees from Columbia University and later studied as a Rhodes Scholar at The Queen’s College, Oxford and the London School of Economics. He lives in the San Fernando Valley with his family and is an avid pianist and photographer.
