Greg Fischer was elected Louisville’s 50th mayor in 2010 and completed his third and final term in office on January 1, 2022.

 

Cited as a “businessman who just happened to be mayor”, Mayor Fischer is a national award winning entrepreneur and innovator who never shied away from hard work, ranging from being a crane operator on the docks of Kodiak, Alaska to co-inventing SerVend ice and beverage dispensing equipment.

 

Working with his brothers, he led the growth of SerVend International into a global firm nationally recognized for business and leadership excellence including a site visit finalist for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1997. Fischer was the chapter chair for the Louisville Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO). SerVend was acquired by Manitowoc, a Fortune 500 company, in 1997.

In 1999, Fischer founded Iceberg Ventures, a private investment firm, and he later co-founded bCatalyst, the first business accelerator in Louisville. Fischer has been a private investor and advisor to dozens of companies.
 

In 2011, Fischer brought his business expertise and love for building high-performance organizations to the Mayor’s office.

 

With the head of a businessman and heart of a social worker, Mayor Fischer set a path for Louisville’s economic renaissance, the recentering of the local economy around next stage technologies, an emphasis on equity and racial justice, and the launch of Evolve502 promise scholarships that provide a free college scholarship for every public high school graduate in the city.

 

During his tenure as mayor, Louisville added 80,000 jobs and 3,000 new businesses with an unprecedented  $100 million+ investment in affordable housing. 20,000 Louisvillians worked themselves out of poverty with an additional 20,000 moving into the middle class.

 

A record $24 billion dollars in capital construction is complete or underway ranging from the Ohio River Bridges Project to one hundred new hotels.

 

Fischer is credited with being the “father of bourbonism”, a new hospitality movement focused on Louisville’s leading position in the bourbon, tourism and local food scenes.

 

Fischer’s love for festivals and the arts was seen early in his life as a concert promoter that was later expanded in his time as mayor through the creation or expansion of festivals like WorldFest and Bourbon & Beyond. A vocal advocate for Louisvillian Muhammad Ali, Fischer is the executive producer of the film, City of Ali, and led the effort to rename the city’s airport to Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport.

 

Louisville’s emergence as a global city was complemented by a 40% increase in foreign-born residents during the mayor’s term. Louisville also was named the International Model City for Compassion four times and for the last seven years of the mayor’s term achieved a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign’s Municipal Equality Index. In 2018, Louisville was named a Top 15 city for attracting millennials.

 

When historic challenges struck Louisville and America in 2020, the Mayor further accelerated his administration’s focus on public safety and police-community relations; addressed systemic racism and police reform; and marshaled all resources to hasten Louisville’s recovery from COVID-19.

 

In 2020, Mayor Fischer was elected by the mayors of America to be president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Governing Magazine named Mayor Fischer Public Official of the Year in 2013. A 2016 Politico survey named him as the most innovative mayor in America.

 

Mayor Fischer is a graduate of Trinity High School and Vanderbilt University. He is married to Dr. Alexandra Gerassimides, the daughter of Greek immigrants who were uprooted during the Greek Civil War. The couple have four adult children and two grandchildren.