In The Arena

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Acquanetta Warren, Mayor, City of Fontana, CA Jul 11, 2018

Show notes

Mayor Acquanetta Warren credits her father for her big dreams. "You've been to the moon," he used to say. There was some truth to that.

Acquanetta Warren's election in 2010 was historic. She is Fontana, Calif.'s first female and first African-American mayor. Her inspiration for public service is actually rooted in watching history being made.

"My parents would have [me] in front of the TV every morning and every evening watching the news," remembers Warren. "I was really afraid because of the civil rights [protests] going on in the South [in the 1960s]. But the more I became afraid, the stronger I became about what I wanted to do -- and that was to change things."

On this episode of "In the Arena," a podcast about public leadership, Warren reflects on the importance of teaching kids about the legacies of MLK and JFK, her initial resistance to running for office, the pitfalls of working in public view, and why her father -- an aerospace worker -- used to tell her that she's been to the moon.

Greg Fischer, Mayor, City of Louisville, KY Jun 27, 2018

Show notes

On his Inauguration Day in 2011, Greg Fischer turned heads when he announced an experiment to make Louisville "the nation's first compassionate city."

"Nobody disagrees with the concept of compassion. But the question is, how do you operationalize it in a city?"

In the last seven years, the city has worked with local businesses and nonprofits to help answer that question. The Kentucky city's work has helped to forge a model that other cities are watching closely. On this episode of "In the Arena," a podcast about public leadership, Fischer discusses how.

Themis Klarides, Minority Leader, Connecticut Legislature Jun 19, 2018

Show notes

Themis Klarides has made a career of defying expectations.

Earlier this year, the Connecticut House minority speaker resisted pressure to run for the open governor's race in her state. Instead, she's making a play to form a Republican majority and become Speaker.

Klarides, 52, the first woman leader of the House Republicans in Connecticut history, was first elected to the legislature two decades ago. Her path wasn't the most traditional route to public office: A former model and competitive body-builder, Klarides also did a stint as a "ring girl" for World Wrestling Entertainment. Early political opponents tried to hold that against her, she says. "I was the state rep who was a swimsuit model and worked for the WWE," says Klarides, who studied for her bar exams backstage between television tapings of Monday Night RAW.

Eric Garcetti, Mayor of Los Angeles Jun 13, 2018

Show notes

On the heals of the 86th annual meeting of the US Conference of Mayors in Boston over the weekend, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti says mayors have what America wants. Garcetti, 47, has been testing the waters for a potential presidential bid in 2020. Even if he doesn't run, he hopes other mayors will. As the chief executives of cities, Garcetti says mayors are "practical, results-oriented, inclusive and decent." In a veiled reference to the current administration, Garcetti laments the current climate, "We have a lot of division, we have a lot of impracticality, we have a lack of experience in government."

"You never win by talking," says Garecetti, 47, a fourth generation Angeleno and self-described accidental public servant, the "highest calling" he says is fundamentally about listening.

He says the mayor's job is to "knit together a narrative" that explains a city to itself. Garcetti thinks technology can help if mayors strike the right balance, saying too many are either "future phobic" or "future passive." He views himself as "future guiding" as evidenced by the city's recent recognition for its use of data in planning and operations by Bloomberberg Philanthropies' What Works Cities, and Equipt to Innovate, a joint initiative of Governing and the non-profit Living Cities.

Clay Jenkinson, Humanities Scholar, Roosevelt Expert Jun 05, 2018

Show notes

On April 23, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt gave what would become one of the most widely quoted speeches of his career. In it, the nation's 26th president used his hyperbolic oratory to bear on the themes of leadership and loneliness.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood," Roosevelt said.

While most of the guests on this show will be public officials, our debut episode features humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson. He explores the context of the quote, which inspired the name of this podcast, and how it fits in Roosevelt's world view of power, persuasion and politics.

"It's probably the most frequently quoted thing that Roosevelt ever said, and if you go into the boardrooms of major corporations or to the offices of CEOs and politicians, anywhere where there is some need for power to assert itself, you almost invariably find that quotation tacked to the wall," says Jenkinson.

PREVIEW: ON BEING IN THE ARENA Jun 01, 2018

Show notes

In a new podcast from Governing magazine, Cathiea Robinett interviews public officials who serve In The Arena today about courage, compassion and creativity in public leadership. The debut season features conversations with:

Clay Jenkinson, Author, Educator, Roosevelt Scholar
Greg Fischer, Mayor of Louisville, KY
Acquanetta Warren, Mayor of Fontana, CA
Themis Klarides, House Majority Leader (D), Connecticut
Kristen Cox, Executive Director, OMB, State of Utah
Eric Garcetti, Mayor of Los Angeles, CA

Episodes drop every Wednesday, beginning June 6.

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