As COVID-19 began spreading from city to city, Jorrit de Jong and Rawi Abdelal, faculty co-chairs of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, a collaboration between Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School, resolved to help mayors address the complex public health, social, racial, and economic challenges exacerbated by the global pandemic. Since launching the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative in 2016, they have worked closely with nearly a thousand mayors and other senior city leaders worldwide to equip them with problem-solving, innovation, and other leadership and management tools to address the most difficult issues in their cities.
This year, De Jong, who is also a senior lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School, and Abdelal, the Herbert F. Johnson Professor of International Management at Harvard Business School, reshaped the initiative’s immersive program for mayors, which kicked off virtually on July 9, to focus on leading social and economic recovery from COVID-19, with an emphasis on equity.
“COVID-19 has deepened the systemic racial, social, and economic inequalities in our cities,” said Jorrit de Jong. “Our new class of mayors will focus on the leadership, management, policy, and civic engagement required to rebuild their cities in a more equitable and sustainable way. The curriculum includes sessions on change management, participatory governance, equitable economic development, fiscal resilience, and racial justice.”
“Our new class of mayors will focus on the leadership, management, policy, and civic engagement required to rebuild their cities in a more equitable and sustainable way.”
The fourth cohort is made up of mayors representing the broad geographic and demographic spectrum of U.S. cities. Almost half of this year’s class are women; one third are African American or Hispanic; and 40 percent are in their first year of office.
“Though we represent vastly different cities, the COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated many long-standing and systemic issues around community health, race, employment, and education in all of our communities and created many shared but unprecedented challenges,” said Shawyn