Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti
NLC Advisory Council Honorary Co-Chair; Mayor of Scranton, PA
Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti took office as Mayor of Scranton on January 6, 2020. Prior to becoming Mayor, she advised the Pennsylvania Auditor General, the chief fiscal watchdog of the commonwealth, on oversight of public school districts, care for older adults, criminal justice reform and student debt.
Mayor Cognetti served in the Obama administration from 2009-2012 as a senior advisor to the Under Secretary for International Affairs at the U.S. Treasury Department. She was a fundraiser and project director on numerous political campaigns, including running the out-of-state volunteer program in Pennsylvania for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign right here in Philadelphia.
She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Oregon Clark Honors College with a BA in English Literature and Romance Languages. Mayor Cognetti is originally from Beaverton, Oregon, where her parents still reside. She lives in Scranton with her husband and daughter.