WANT TO CHANGE THE WORLD? START WITH YOUR CITY. NOW.

The greatest driver of

Cities.
The world is in the throes of a sweeping population shift from the countryside to the city. The global urban population is growing by 65 million annually, equivalent to adding seven Chicagos a yearUrbanization will be one of this centurys biggest drivers of global economic growth.
McKinsey Global Institute Report Urban World: Mapping the Economic Power of Cities

global economic growth?

243
million Americans live in the 3% of our nation that is urban.
At a time when more than half of the world lives in urban areas, strong, successful American cities are more essential than ever to a strong America.

Cities are, as Tom Friedman of the New York Times noted the job factories of the future.

Fixing Americas biggest problems and re-winning the world can only be accomplished one city at a time.
Jim Clifton Chairman of Gallup The Coming Jobs War

we should be looking more to our backyards and communities of makers and tinkerers than to Washingtonto ensure a competitive advantage, a community will have to act more like a country, taking its destiny into its own hands.
Adam Segal Advantage: How American Innovation Can Overcome the Asian Challenge

.cities and regions have become the true engines of economic growth.
Richard Florida Whos Your City?

At a time when the world is coming us at lightning speed, moving forward is not enough.

biggest driver of economic growth in cities? Urban leaders who are connected with each other and TO the smartest ideas for making cities successful.

We must connect outward at the same time were moving forward.

Collaborative communitiestranscend the boundaries of time and spacethe new age of networked intelligence renders conventional approaches to value creation insufficientorganizations that make their boundaries porous to external ideas and human capital outperform those that rely solely on internal resources and capabilities
Don Tapscott and Anthony Brown Macrowikinomics

 Our social species greatest talent is the ability to learn from each other.our ability to connect with each other is the defining characteristic of our species.knowledge (is) more valuable than ever, and that has increased the value of learning from people in other cities.
ED GLAESER HARVARD PROFESSOR Triumph of the City

tear down walls, build bridges, and light fires.

steve jobs

The future belongs to those cities who can connect and collaborate with the smartest people and the smartest ideas in the most places and in the most ways, and work twice as hard and twice as fast. The new raw material is knowledge; the cities that collect, sift, mine, analyze, share, and apply it the fastest and most effectively will win. There is always something more to learn from someone else, somewhere else.

CEOs for Cities is global learning community and partnership network that connects urban leaders to each other and to smart ideas and practices, case studies, compelling stories, and lessons learned for making cities more vibrant, sustainable,

Great Cities
Are Advanced by Great Leaders.

and economically competitive and successful. We connect across sectors, borders, levels, and generations. We are Civic CEOsrather than be selflimited by our nameCEOs for Cities inclusive definition of CEO means not only Chief Executive Officers but also Chief Entrepreneurial Officers, Chief Education Officers, Chief Economic Officers, Chief Experience Officers, and Chief Exploration Officers. In other words, we honor urban

Great Leaders
Are Advanced by Great Ideas.

Great Ideas
Are Advanced by great networks.

No city lacks talent; but most cities lack a structure and process for harnessing crosssector talent, and sharing smart ideas not only across sectors, but across borders, levels, and generations. Join the CEOs for Cities Network and Connect with the Great Leaders and the Great Ideas that are Changing the World.

leadership where it happens, regardless of rank or sector. Since we were founded in 2001, CEOs for Cities has been a fresh, distinctive voice for the power, promise, and potential of cities. As Paul Grogan noted in Comeback Cities, A living place is someones success. These are matters of choice and skill, not laws of physics.

City Vitals
Our Framework for Measuring City Success
C onnectedness I nnovation T alent Y our Distinctive Assets

City Dividends
Our Action Agenda

Actionable goals for achieving measurable economic progress.

Connectedness Opportunit y Innovation Green

Talent Immigration

Distinctiveness

We frame, act, connect, engage.

City Clusters
Our Organizational Platform

 

 eams of cross-sector Civic CEOs T in each city in our global learning community and partnership network.

City Cluster members participate as a team in our national, regional, and local convenings; and have access to our exclusive member-driven research portfolio and knowledge base of smart ideas and practices, case studies, compelling stories, and lessons learned.

CEOs for Cities is an idea factory for investing in the distinctive assets of cities. With the help of former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and many other great urban leaders throughout the country, CEOs for Cities has developed a unique partnership network for creating, sharing, and helping implement cutting-edge ideas for maximizing the promise and potential of American cities.
Paul Grogan Founder of CEOs for Cities President and CEO, Boston Foundation

CEOS for Cities is an important tool for our cluster as it exposes our group to the successes and challenges of other cities. We advance our knowledge by interacting with leaders that provoke new thought for our cluster members.
Dave Egner President and CEO Katy Locker Vice President of Programs Hudson-Webber Foundation, Detroit, Michigan

By having a CEOs for Cities cluster, we have been able to bring 1215 colleagues at once. Rather than having 23 of us trying to spread the knowledge to our colleagues when we get home, we have a cluster hearing it and then brainstorming about how we can use the content. That is a huge value.
Brian Payne President and CEO Central Indiana Community Foundation and The Indianapolis Foundation

By participating in CEOs for Cities, you are able to stay ahead of the pack by staying connected through the network, best practices and ideas, and events.
Jim Ukrop Former Chairman First Market Bank, Richmond, Virginia

Second, it provides cutting-

CEOs for Cities IS UNIQUE

First, its the only national urban organization I know of with a network of cross-sector, cross-generational leaders who share ideas and practices about the economic success of cities from multiple perspectives.

edge research and actionable goals, called City Dividends, for achieving economic progress. Third, CEOS for Cities Talent Dividend creates an aggressive and exciting imperative for Americas cities to set more ambitious targets in higher education attainment and economic success.
Nancy Zimpher Board Chair, CEOs for Cities Chancellor of SUNY, The State University of New York.

 When we are all working so hard on our own city, we sometimes dont see whats going on in the broader world. The CEOs for Cities network and programming has provided us the opportunity to benchmark what were doing against whats happening in the broader realm, and the opportunity to showcase some of the things were doing that are cutting edge.
David Ginsburg President and CEO Downtown Cincinnati Inc.

CEOs for Cities provides extraordinary value. They have allowed us to create muscle memory around collaborating to solve a civic problem in a unique way.
Doug Kridler President and CEO The Columbus Foundation

CEOs for Cities places us elbow to elbow with amazing thought leaders from across the country. It has helped us launch data-driven initiatives and the cross-sector approach has made us more cognizant that we needed increased alignment between our community leadership training model and our community values.
David Williams President and CEO Leadership Memphis

Your Ideas

Your Ideas

We connect urban leaders to powerful ideas and to each other through our global learning community and partnership network, and by researching, creating, and sharing smart ideas and practices in the four areas most vital to city success: Connectedness, Innovation, Talent, and Your Distinctive Assets.

To contact us, send us an email to ceos@ceosforcities.org

Lee Fisher President and CEO Lfisher@ceosforcities.org Nancy L. Zimpher Board Chair Chancellor of SUNY, the State University of New York Co-Founders Paul Grogan President/CEO, Boston Foundation; Richard M. Daley former Mayor of Chicago; Charles Ratner Chairman, Forest City Enterprises; George Rupp former President, Columbia University; Eugene Trani former President, Virginia Commonwealth University. Offices: Chicago + Cleveland + Washington, D.C.

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