By Nicole Morell, Director of Communications
Miro Weinberger served as the Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, from 2012 to 2024, the longest continuous service of any mayor in the city’s history. During his tenure, Weinberger led significant initiatives that transformed Burlington, earning widespread recognition for his leadership in sustainability, economic development, and public health. He joined the Taubman Center as a Visiting Fellow in January 2025. Read his full bio.
What interested you in becoming a Taubman Center Visiting Fellow?
I had a great experience as a student at the Kennedy School. The school really helped me shape my worldview about what I wanted to accomplish as an elected official. I started reengaging with the
Kennedy School and the Taubman Center late in my mayorship—thanks in part to the networking of then student and now Vermont State Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale MC/MPA 2018 and Taubman Center Executive Director Rafael Carbonell. When I left office, I had to figure out a new path forward. I was excited about the possibility of being on campus again, about working with Kennedy School students, and getting a chance to be part of the Harvard community once more. It's been exactly what I hoped it would be: a great transition for me out of office into figuring out what's next.
What topics at the state and local level are you most interested in?
Housing is the issue that I know best. Having been an affordable housing developer and mayor, it is such a dominant issue on people's minds right now. It’s been great to have the opportunity of this visiting fellowship to bring more focus to this issue with students, faculty, and advisory board members. At the beginning of 2025, I launched a statewide housing abundance organization called Let's Build Homes. I don't know if that would have happened without the fellowship, which gave me the opportunity to really focus on housing issues.
Another issue I'm focused on, which was also a top issue in my time as mayor, is public safety and policing. We are still in a challenging time for public safety as a country. The fellowship has given me a great opportunity to go deeper into this issue as well, including hosting a discussion with my former police chief, Brandon Del Pozo MPA 2004, about the opioid crisis.
Lastly, I’m focused on climate policies. It was a big issue during my time as mayor and so many of the students who come to my office hours have wanted to talk about these topics like electrification and renewable energy, and how cities can lead on climate issues. It remains a focus for me and it is clearly a top issue for many students.
What influenced you to run for office and move from the development space into public service?
My interest in public service began early as I grew up in a family that had dinner together every night and talked about politics and government. From an early age, I just had the sense that government mattered and that it was a way to improve the world and help your neighbors and your community. That's part of why I ended up at the Kennedy School as a grad student. I thought I might want to run for office at some point, but then I had a whole career in housing. What got me off the sidelines and into a race was going through the Great Recession as an affordable housing developer. Those were tough years in development and in my career.
Then, as the Burlington mayor's race came into focus, it was clear the city was in a challenging financial situation. The city was downgraded to the edge of junk bond status, but no one who was talking about running or had announced their candidacy had any financial background. I came to realize that the experiences I had during the Great Recession gave me confidence that I would do a better job managing the city's very challenging finances than anyone else. I was running against people who had a lot more governmental experience, but I made the case that I was best prepared to address the city's finances. That was the key issue in the race, and I was able to deliver on that. We went from the edge of junk bond status to regaining our AA rating in just over nine years.
Are there any lessons or experiences from your time as a student at Harvard Kennedy School that you often think back to or rely on?
One that I think about all the time is a planning course I took with Professor Alan Altshuler. His course offered this big-picture look at housing and planning, one I hadn’t gotten through my work in development. What I internalized about the course was that, in a lot of ways, most of American planning has been kind of a failure, with huge effort and resources go into the creation of plans that end up on bookshelves collecting dust.
While I was mayor, Burlington received a few hundred thousand dollars from the federal government under President Obama to support a comprehensive planning effort. And I really remembered that lesson from Altshuler and was focused on making sure the plan wasn't just an academic document, but that we were developing something with the intent to build what came out of it. That plan became our roadmap, and we kept it very much a live document, completing many of the things we laid out in it.
Another important lesson from that same course is the coalitional approach that Oregon used to create a land-use policy that protected sensitive natural areas while making it easier to develop housing and other investments within urban growth boundaries. We created a similar coalition from the mayor’s office to advance my city housing and downtown development policies, and the housing advocacy group we launched at the beginning of 2025 is focused on creating this type of coalition statewide.
What advice would you give to current Harvard Kennedy School students interested in state and local government and considering what path to take—elected office, agency work, governmental staff, or other?
An overarching piece of advice is that anyone who is considering a career or part of a career in government should think seriously about doing that at the local level. I don't think that's always been the way Kennedy School students have been oriented. It’s been exciting to come back and see how many more resources there are for people considering a career in local government now than there were 30 years ago. The Transition Term program is a wonderful opportunity to really see what working at the municipal level might be like. I would encourage all students who have a passing thought that city government might interest them to follow up on that opportunity. I also think they should book time with the Taubman Center Visiting Fellows during the year – that’s another great resource.
I just encourage people to think about what issues really matter to them and encourage them to think about how local government offers very concrete and impactful ways to work on those issues. In many ways, local government has a more direct interface with constituents than is usually possible in state and federal government. I encourage students to think about that and look for opportunities to experiment and explore whether this type of work appeals to them.
