Edwin Lee

Lee is the 43rd Mayor of the City and County of San Francisco. The former City Administrator, Lee was appointed unanimously as successor mayor by the Board of Supervisors on January 11, 2011 to fill the remaining year of former Mayor Gavin Newsom’s term. Lee is the first Asian-American Mayor in San Francisco history; he was elected to a four year term in November 2011 and was inaugurated on January 8th of this year. Lee has led many of the City’s initiatives to move to cleaner vehicles and an infrastructure to support electric vehicles and green city government. As of today, San Francisco has reduced citywide carbon emissions to 12% below our 1990 levels as in pursuit of our goal of reducing carbon emissions to 80% below by 2050. One hundred percent of the city’s transit fleet is alternatively fueled (electricity, biodiesel or compressed natural gas). San Franciscans recycle or compost 78 percent of the materials we discard -- one of the highest waste diversion rates in the world -- bringing the city ever closer to our goal of zero waste by 2020. San Francisco has also set a goal of being 100% renewably powered by 2020. In 2011 San Francisco was named the Greenest City in North America by Siemens and the Economist Intelligence Unit. Mayor Lee first began working for the City and Council of San Francisco in 1989 as the Investigator for the City’s first Whistle Blower Ordinance and has since served as the Executive Director of the Human Rights Commission, Director of City Purchasing, and Director of the Department of Public Works before he was appointed as City Administrator 2005.