Adrian M. Fenty is the fifth elected Mayor of the District of Columbia. He was born December 6, 1970 in the District and grew up in Mount Pleasant. His parents, owners of the popular Fleet Feet athletic-apparel store, still live in his boyhood home. Working at the store during breaks and on weekends, Fenty attended Oberlin College before earning a Juris Doctorate from Howard University Law School.

Fenty’s commitment to public service began at an early age. In college, he worked as an intern in the offices of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton and Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio). These early experience gave him a flair for constituent service that would be a hallmark of his career as an elected official. After graduating from law school, Fenty served as an ANC Commissioner and President of the 16th Street Neighborhood Association.

For two years, Adrian Fenty worked as the lead attorney and counsel for the DC Council Committee on Education, Libraries and Recreation. In 1999, he began his campaign for the Ward Four council seat at the age of 28. He defeated a four-term incumbent by knocking on every door in the ward and promising a new standard of constituent service.

In his first term, Councilmember Fenty attracted new jobs and homes, fighting against nuisance properties that generated crime and decay, heightening police responsiveness and expanding community policing. Since he took office in 2001, the District initiated the construction or modernization of more than a dozen schools and recreation centers in Ward 4. In the same time, new sit-down restaurants and other local businesses opened and new housing was built.

Fenty served as Chairperson of the Committee on Human Services, overseeing the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, the Child and Family Services Agency, the Department of Human Services and the Office on Aging. The committee was responsible for overseeing a budget of $750 million. Highlights of his legislative service include establishing a stable, long-term funding source for school modernization and leading the charge to make indoor District workplaces smoke-free.

On September 12, 2006, Adrian Fenty became the first person in history to win all 142 precincts in a District of Columbia mayoral election. He won the subsequent general election with 89 percent of the vote, and assumed office January 2, 2007.

In his first year in office, Fenty began the long-overdue transformation of the District of Columbia Public Schools by placing them under the authority of the Mayor. DCPS has begun a new era of high-quality education with a new management team, new personnel rules and an ambitious facilities modernization program. The Fenty Administration has added police officers and expanded community policing initiatives, expanded health care coverage for the uninsured, and constructed thousands of units of affordable housing while revamping delivery of services to the homeless.

Also in its first year, the Fenty Administration reorganized the Department of Health and created a Department of Disability Services as a cabinet-level agency. It finalized the sale of Greater Southeast Community Hospital (now United Medical Center) in a public-private partnership that kept the facility open for patients east of the Anacostia River. It opened a new one-stop permitting center and launched a CapStat accountability program to examine the performance of each District Government agency using objective, numerical standards.

Mayor Fenty has ordered aggressive reform in the areas of child welfare, emergency medical services and routine service delivery. He instituted the District’s switch from the antiquated zone system to time-and-distance meters for its taxicabs. The Administration has also delivered the new Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge and Nationals Park on time and on budget.

A long-distance runner in high school, Mayor Fenty regularly takes part in triathlons and other races in the District and throughout the region. Mayor Fenty lives with his law school classmate and wife Michelle, their twin sons Matthew and Andrew and a baby girl on the way, in the District’s Crestwood neighborhood.