--- title: Why Mike Bloomberg’s Group Is Guiding Hundreds of Mayors description: One of America's richest men has become the nation's mayoral tutor. Bloomberg's nonprofit has trained more than half of the country's big-city mayors canonical: https://time.com/6295185/mike-bloomberg-philanthropies-mayors-training/ author: Philip Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-07-17T16:14:30.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:51:04.677Z article:section: Politics og:title: Mike Bloomberg’s Organization Is Guiding Hundreds of Mayors og:description: Michael Bloomberg has quietly emerged as the nation's mayoral tutor. The billionaire media mogul's organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies, is helping train and guide hundreds of mayors across the US. Phillip Elliott explains what's behind the operation og:url: https://time.com/6295185/mike-bloomberg-philanthropies-mayors-training/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt650860ceeda518ce/698a3eb8d07533c3dce6e343/GettyImages-1493218770.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Museum Of The City Of New York's Centennial Gala Honoring Michael R. Bloomberg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Mike Bloomberg’s Organization Is Guiding Hundreds of Mayors twitter:description: Michael Bloomberg has quietly emerged as the nation's mayoral tutor. The billionaire media mogul's organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies, is helping train and guide hundreds of mayors across the US. Phillip Elliott explains what's behind the operation twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt650860ceeda518ce/698a3eb8d07533c3dce6e343/GettyImages-1493218770.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Mike Bloomberg’s Organization Is Guiding Hundreds of Mayors Across the Country > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Newsletters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME publishes seven free email newsletters, written and edited by TIME journalists, reaching more than 1.1 million engaged readers. TIME has reported on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world since 1923, and its newsletters bring that same authority directly to the inbox. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=474f847f-ca7f-462f-915c-8ee303a4b89f&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Striking Writers and Actors In New York Weigh In On AI's Impact on Hollywood [Watch (HLS stream): Striking Writers and Actors In New York Weigh In On AI's Impact on Hollywood](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/PAcU0Gv4.m3u8) (2:48)  _Published 2023-07-17. Striking screenwriters and actors outside the New York offices of Paramount addressed concerns about how A.I. will affect their jobs in the future._  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Jul 17, 2023 4:14 PM UTC  Michael Bloomberg and New York City Mayor Eric Adams attend the Museum of the City of New York's Centennial Gala honoring Bloomberg on May 24, 2023 in New York City Michael Bloomberg and New York City Mayor Eric Adams attend the Museum of the City of New York's Centennial Gala honoring Bloomberg on May 24, 2023 in New York City Ilya S. Savenok—Getty Images for Museum Of The City Of New York  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Jul 17, 2023 4:14 PM UTC _This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up_ [_here_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite) _to get stories like this sent to your inbox._ As the nation grappled with the first wave of Covid-19 lockdowns in March of 2020, a lot of public officials were desperate for information. Did they really have to start [canceling](https://time.com/5820800/ohio-gov-mike-dewine-coronavirus/) sporting events, concerts, even schools? And for how long was this going to last? What about vaccines, herd immunity, experimental treatments? Everyone, it [seemed](https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/09/26/covid-questions-variants-long-covid/), had answers but not [necessarily](https://www.newyorker.com/science/medical-dispatch/what-we-dont-know-about-covid-19) facts. The public [posturing](https://time.com/6051414/donald-trump-wuhan-laboratory-leak/) coming from the Trump administration seemed to shift every day. Few cities had fully considered how to confront a pandemic, and it wasn’t like the plans from the 1918 flu [pandemic](https://time.com/5894403/how-the-1918-flu-pandemic-ended/) offered best practices that could be easily replicated. So, in a remarkably unsexy manner, Bloomberg Philanthropies swung into action, tapping the research and emotional support network it had quietly been building for city leaders for more than a decade. By the end of March, the data-based arm of billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s charity operations was organizing weekly calls with mayors, public health chiefs, and politicians to help thousands of officials trade information and ideas—and even blow off some steam in some cases. --- ### More from TIME --- In a moment that lacked an obvious playbook, Bloomberg Philanthropies provided a lifeline to local leaders across the country. Yet that barely scratches the surface of how this quiet giant has shaped public policy throughout the country. More than 250 cities are currently getting some level of help through the former New York City Mayor’s giving arm focused on government. Since 2017, hundreds of leaders, including more than half of the nation’s big-city mayors, have churned through the leadership bootcamp he sponsors run out of Harvard University. (The latest cohort of 120 city leaders from six continents announced on Monday is its largest class yet.) In the ten years since he ended his tenure as New York City mayor, Bloomberg has become best known in the political space for his efforts promoting anti-gun violence and climate legislation, stances that in some right-wing circles have made him something of a boogeyman. But the focus on those more conspicuous endeavors ignores the area where the media mogul is arguably even more influential: the ninth-richest man in America has emerged as the nation’s mayoral tutor. “We do a really robust amount of leadership and skills building to help the mayor solve problems back home,” says James Anderson, the head of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ government innovations programs. “But the network that’s been created as part of this is an equally powerful force for change.” As The D.C. Brief has [written](https://time.com/6248984/congress-mayors-lessons-kate-gallego/) plenty of times, [mayors](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/us/22cities.html) are some of the most responsive politicians in America. City council members and county commissioners are often anonymous bureaucrats, but everyone knows who the mayor of the town is. And there’s no escaping complaints about potholes while picking up potpies in the grocery store or hearing about overflowing bins at the recycling center while running an errand. It may seem obvious in hindsight that the pandemic was going to yield a mental health [crisis](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/12/well/long-covid-depression-symptoms-treatment.html), but these on-the-ground leaders were often the ones who spotted it [first](https://time.com/5943896/covid-19-teen-mental-health/), well before it became part of the [discussions](https://time.com/6211734/mental-health-treatment-pandemic-young-people/) here in D.C. What started as an anecdotal observation quickly became front-of-mind for future calls among mayors—and on their staff meetings back home. But mayors also can be some of the least prepared to actually run their cities. The skill sets that make good politicians aren’t necessarily the same ones called for to run a bureaucracy that can rival some states in budgets, demands, and competing interests. And it’s a skills gap that voters, acting as city H.R. chiefs, often choose to ignore. Which is why it’s worth noting that Bloomberg—who ran New York as a policy-minded technocracy for three terms—is backfilling a lot of that with hard data collection, vetted research, and access to a network of a cohort that can often feel isolating on its own. Bloomberg officials aren’t ones to brag, but the data speaks for itself. With the new class—including the mayors of Los Angeles, Tallahassee, and Providence, R.I— 275 mayors and more than 400 top top aides have gone through the program at the year-long Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative in the last six years. Although Bloomberg Philanthropies funds public health, arts, education, and environmental programs—to the tune of $1.7 billion last year alone—the government efforts are what probably are seen every day in your cities. For instance, investing in [bicycle lanes](https://www.bloomberg.org/press/bloomberg-philanthropies-launches-new-initiative-to-build-ambitious-cycling-infrastructure-projects-around-the-world/) has been a long priority for Bloomberg himself, and thus his charities. And the Bloomberg-funded crash course seminar for new mayors has provided a template for leading a cumbersome city that, with the right resistance, can gum things up for the new team and allow career staffers to simply run out the clock until the next elected arrives. That’s not to say that any of this is easy, even with Bloomberg U’s informal alumni network. “There is no major problem that a city hall can solve on its own. Collaboration is fundamental,” says Anderson, who started working for Bloomberg in City Hall and moved with him to the foundation. “Very few cities have done the math to think about what kind of capacity do we need internally to summon, nurture, feed, maintain complex collaborations over time? That is a skillset and a competency that is absolutely required in this day and age.” Most of the mayors who enter into his group’s Harvard program, he says, “don’t have the skills and the capacity on hand to do the type of complex collaboration that this moment requires.” To be sure, New Yorkers still [bemoan](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/reader-center/bloomberg-new-york-city.html) the Bloomberg era, aspects of which subsequent leaders have worked to unwind. But there’s no denying that his cold-eyed cost-benefit [analysis](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/books/review/the-many-lives-of-michael-bloomberg-eleanor-randolph.html) was usually grounded in facts, however inconvenient. That same approach is now quietly setting the agenda in city halls from coast to coast. _Make sense of what matters in Washington._ [_Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite)_._ ## Transcript Park Recreation. Smiley face, you can stand to know, they can do the writer's voice and make a right or say anything. I think we're going to need people that are able to speak the truth. And that's what writers that's what we do. One of the proposal set for 5 a.m. PCP is to take digital likeness of background. Actors for 1, pay them for one day, and they would be able to use that image of that background actor in perpetuity forever. And the after we don't get paid for one day. That's ridiculous. Actors deserve to be paid every time they're on screens. And also you want to wait until there's a lot of emotional trauma and believing that people do they really feel the emotions of life and they try to translate in French, like, I could have seen it. Have. I got a friend trying to make things really, really human in. The worry is that even though they're just sleeping, a lot of people's Prince, they're taking their words are taking their lives. Just let you know. I felt the right person the actor Is pushing back against artificial intelligence, you know to tell can give a prompt and a computer can write a script for us and then you hire a handful of writers to make it sound more human. Fundamentalist Loft if human beings are not bringing. All of them, are all of the world to me. So that there is a protection for the actors are getting paid. If they are going to be scanned for every time that it is used and needs to be like, you need to have some type of compensation for that, right before it is to get a eye protection written into our contract. Because right now nobody has that. So, you know, I do think that's a big part of it over, but, you know, once we stopped working May 2nd whenever we like go get some of your knowledge. It's like I want to be back at work. I love writing. I'm going to be writing but we're willing to hold out as long as it takes to take to get a contract at the best Mama's I've ever had. While acting are complete mistake. Our flutes are going for that eighth or ninth cake and you try something completely out of the blue I can ever do that way. I can I'm Blue Line. I I can never improvising and I can come up with something magical and so I think we're going down a slippery, slope as we age. 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