- Pritzker Fellows
- Former Fellows
- Pete Buttigieg
Pete Buttigieg
Former U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary
Winter-Spring 2025 Pritzker Fellow
Seminar Series: “Making Sense of the 2020s: What the Rest of This Decade Will Require From Leaders in Policy, Politics & Communications”
Biography
Pete Buttigieg served from 2021 to 2025 as U.S. Secretary of Transportation. During his tenure, he worked to launch over sixty thousand infrastructure projects across the country, improve transportation safety and technology, expand airline passenger protections, and resolve pandemic-related supply chain disruptions. He was the first openly gay person in U.S. history to be confirmed to serve in a president’s Cabinet.
Previously, Buttigieg served two terms as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, where he was elected at the age of 29 and led the city to its strongest period of economic and population growth in decades. He also served for seven years as an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, taking a leave of absence from his role as mayor in 2014 to deploy to Afghanistan. A candidate for the Democratic nomination for President in 2020, his historic campaign won the Iowa caucuses and finished second in the New Hampshire primary.
He holds degrees in history and literature from Harvard and in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He lives in northern Michigan with his husband Chasten, their two children, Gus and Penelope, and their dog, Buddy.
Seminars
“Making Sense of the 2020s: What the Rest of This Decade Will Require From Leaders in Policy, Politics & Communications”
Shortly before his thirtieth birthday, Pete Buttigieg was elected mayor of his industrial hometown of South Bend, Indiana. In the years that followed, he led his city to a historic recovery, served in Afghanistan as a military officer, entered the 2020 race for president and won the Iowa Democratic Caucus, joined the Biden-Harris cabinet as Secretary of Transportation, oversaw the biggest federal infrastructure investments in his department’s history, and became known as one of the Democratic Party’s most effective communicators. Meanwhile, in his personal life, he came out as gay, married Chasten Glezman, became a father of two and resettled in Northern Michigan. In this seminar series, he will reflect on lessons learned from his personal, political and policy experience - with a focus on how students can prepare to contend with the key political and societal questions that their generation will face in the coming years.
In January of 2021, I arrived in Washington to take the helm of the U.S. Department of Transportation. Four years later, I left the post of Secretary as the Department prepared for a new administration. In this seminar, we will discuss the dynamics of presidential transitions from the viewpoint of the Cabinet, including how to prepare for a confirmation hearing, how transition teams operate and how the realities of taking leadership at a large federal agency compare to what students (or an incoming Secretary) might have imagined.
Like most new Cabinet members, the level of financial and management responsibility that awaited me on Day One was substantially greater than what I had experienced before. And like anyone in a new job, I relied on previous experience - especially experiences as a mayor, a military officer and a presidential candidate - to approach the role and develop my leadership style. We will discuss how lessons from those prior roles in public service and politics helped me to understand how to be effective during critical moments.
Many of a public office holder’s most important and best-remembered moments are unexpected, from slow-building crises to emergencies that erupt with no warning at all. We will examine several of the crises that I confronted as Secretary - including the supply chain crisis of 2021, the outage of an FAA system shutting down air traffic nationwide and the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore - and discuss how policymakers respond when disaster strikes.
Federal agencies manage enormous resources and hold significant power, but all of their authorities and funding depend on the United States Congress. A federal agency head has, in effect, a 535-member board of directors, each of whom has a distinct view and agenda. From shepherding legislation and informing Members about emergencies affecting their constituents to appearing at often-contentious committee hearings, engaging Congress was among the most important dimensions of my job as Secretary. In this seminar, we will discuss how federal agencies and Congress work together - and sometimes clash.
Running for office is only one of many ways to make a difference - but it can be a profoundly rewarding and impactful step to take. We’ll discuss the process of deciding whether to seek office, including several cases where I decided against doing so, as well as the decision to pursue the 2020 presidential nomination, with an emphasis on how the process is different for younger and first-time candidates.
From my first campaign for State Treasurer through my presidential campaign and service as Secretary, engaging the public through press and digital media has been a vital element of my work. But in the last fifteen years, the means for doing so have evolved rapidly and shifted radically. We’ll discuss what I’ve learned from various forms of media engagement in my career - and I’ll want to hear how you see this landscape evolving when it comes to how your generation gets information.
Fundamentally, politics and policy have to do with addressing disagreement - reaching decisions about what to do when there are competing values and interests that point in different directions. There are profound differences between political parties, but also within them, and even within close-knit teams and offices participating in politics. We’ll discuss how to navigate differences and divisions with a guest from across the aisle whom I came to respect while we worked with - and against - each other during my time as Secretary.
Special Guest: Garret Graves, former United States Representative from Louisiana
One of the easiest things to forget about the people who we see in public offices and political debates is that they are, well, people. In this seminar we’ll discuss how to retain your humanity while living through the pressures and the distortions that come with campaigning for and holding high office. And we’ll examine what it means to be a whole person while living a very public life.