Austin Beutner

Austin Michael Beutner (born April 8, 1960) is an American businessman who served as Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent from May 1, 2018 to June 30, 2021. He previously served as the first deputy mayor of Los Angeles from 2010 through 2013, and briefly ran in the 2013 Los Angeles mayoral election. Prior to entering politics, Beutner was an investment banker and would later become the publisher and CEO of the Los Angeles Times and The San Diego Union-Tribune. Life Early life and education Beutner was born in New York and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the son of German immigrants who came to the United States in the 1920s for economic opportunity. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father was a manufacturing engineer. His mother was Jewish and his father was Roman Catholic, although he did not find out that his father's family was Christian until he was an adult. He is a graduate of East Grand Rapids High School, and graduated from Dartmouth College with a Bachelor of Arts in economics. Beutner has lectured at the University of Southern California Bedrosian Center on Governance, the UCLA Anderson School of Management, and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Beutner is a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School. In 2016, Beutner gave the commencement address to the 2016 graduating class of the USC Price School of Public Policy.