Pete Buttigieg is an American politician, former military officer, and was the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, appointed in 2021 by President Joe Biden. He was the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, serving from 2012 to 2020, where he focused on urban revitalization and infrastructure development. A Rhodes Scholar and Harvard graduate, Buttigieg also served as a Navy Reserve intelligence officer, including a deployment to Afghanistan in 2014. He became the first openly gay presidential candidate to earn delegates in a major party primary during his 2020 Democratic presidential campaign.