UNITED STATES SENATE
SUBJECT: Ambassadorial Nomination: Certificate of
Demonstrated Competence — Foreign Service
Act, Section 304(a)(4)
POST: The Republic of India
CANDIDATE: Eric M. Garcetti
As Mayor of the City of Los Angeles from 2013 through 2022, Eric M. Garcetti led LA’s successful bid to return the summer Olympic Games to American soil for the first time in three decades. He took early, aggressive action to effectively confront the COVID-19 pandemic, building one of the world’s largest local testing and vaccine programs, including one of the first national equity programs to address hardest-hit communities. Mr. Garcetti served as the global Chair of C40 Cities – a network of 97 of the world’s biggest cities taking bold climate action – and led the organization’s engagement and expansion in India. During 12 years as an Intelligence Officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve Component, he served under the Commander, Pacific Fleet and the Defense Intelligence Agency, retiring in 2017 as a Lieutenant. Mr. Garcetti’s demonstrated leadership skills and years of experience in the Indo-Pacific region make him an excellent candidate to be U.S. Ambassador to India.
A Rhodes Scholar, Mr. Garcetti studied at The Queen’s College, Oxford and the London School of Economics and Political Science, conducted fieldwork on nationalism and ethnic conflict in Eritrea and Ethiopia and published his research on multi-ethnic nationalism, insurgency, and international development. He co-founded Climate Mayors and led more than 400 U.S. mayors to adopt the Paris Climate agreement. Mr. Garcetti was selected as an inaugural Asia 21 Fellow of the Asia Society, is currently an honorary fellow at The Queen’s College, Oxford, and taught at Occidental College’s Department of Diplomacy and World Affairs, as well as at the University of Southern California School of International Relations. He earned a B.A. and M.A. at Columbia University, where he was a John Jay Scholar, during which time he also worked in the field with American Friends of Democracy in Burma to promote democratic transition and human rights in Burma in the early 1990s. He speaks fluent Spanish.