Former S.F. Mayor London Breed reveals her post-City Hall career plans
The Aspen Policy Academy announced Wednesday that Breed and G.T. Bynum, the Republican former mayor of Tulsa, are its first bipartisan 'civic innovation' advisers-in-residence. The academy, a Bay Area-based operation of the Washington, D.C. think tank Aspen Institute, said Breed and Bynum will spend six months mentoring fellows on policy projects, representing the academy at events and working on projects about policy subjects of their choosing.
It's not a full-time job, though it does come with a stipend, and Breed is believed to be exploring other unspecified career opportunities as well. Still, the academy's announcement provided the first public indication of how San Francisco's former mayor is spending some of her time following 12 years as an elected official in the city.
'This program is about more than learning how government works — it's about inspiring a new era of civic leadership,' Breed said in a statement released by the academy.
Aspen Institute CEO Dan Porterfield said in a statement that mayors 'bring distinctive insights to the work of policymaking given their proximity to the people and communities they serve.' Breed and Bynum 'will be an invaluable resource to future policy leaders,' Porterfield said.
The Aspen Institute has connections to Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization tied to former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He was one of Breed's top benefactors when she ran for reelection last year. Breed also appointed a former Bloomberg staffer to the board of supervisors during her final weeks in office.
Breed was elected mayor in 2018 and served in the role for more than six years, until she was unseated in November by Daniel Lurie. A native of the city who grew up in public housing in the Western Addition, she was the first Black woman mayor of San Francisco.
Her tenure at City Hall was marked by a series of overlapping crises, including the pandemic, which hurt the city's economy and upended the agenda on which she campaigned. Breed won praise for her early response to COVID-19, but her tenure quickly became dominated by public outrage over rampant drug use on city streets and record overdose deaths driven by the rise of fentanyl. As downtown offices emptied out, major retailers fled Union Square and viral videos of brazen property crimes spread online. San Francisco's reputation took a nosedive, further complicating Breed's fight for another term.
Her reelection campaign last year centered around a hopeful message, pointing to a drop in reported crime and other developments as evidence that she was leading San Francisco out of its pandemic doldrums. But Lurie, a political outsider who'd never held elected office before, ultimately defeated her by 10 points
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