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I was an only child to parents Joseph and Jennifer Buttigieg, I was born on January 19, 1982, and was raised in south bend Indiana. My father immigrated from Malta while he was in college, and although he studied to be a Jesuit priest my father ended up becoming a literature professor at University of Notre Dame for nearly 3 decades
My mother, Jennifer, is a linguist and hails from Indiana. Like  My father, My mother taught at the University of Notre Dame as a professor for almost three decades. Growing up in south bend I like many other Americans in the industrial midwest, grew up surrounded by empty factories and abandoned houses sometimes hearing that the only to a good future was to get out.

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As the child of two college professors, I excelled academically. I was my own high school valedictorian and also matriculated to Harvard University as a history and literature major. after graduating in 2014, I became a Rhodes scholar at the University of Oxford and graduated with a B.A. in philosophy, politics, and economics. During my college years, I got involved in politics on the state level and was later employed as a director by a consulting firm in Washington, D.C. post-college, I worked on John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004 and for another consulting firm, Mckinsey and campaign in Chicago. I currently serve as an advisor for the Truman National Security Project, a progressive national security organization. Besides my native English, I have fluency in seven additional languages: Italian, Maltese, Spanish, Dari Persian, Arabic, French, and Norweigan the last being self-taught.

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As a supporter and volunteer of Barack Obama's presidential bid, I was inspired to enlist in the military in 2007. Two years later, I became a U.S. Navy Reserve officer, and while serving my first term as the mayor of South Bend in 2014, was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan, where I took part in the Afghanistan Threat Finance Cell (ATFC), which aimed to disrupt the financial systems of terrorist organizations.

In my 2019 autobiography, Shortest Way Home, Buttigieg described serving in dangerous areas in Kabul: “In a ritual to be repeated dozens of times, I would heave my armored torso into the driver’s seat of a Land Cruiser, chamber a round in my M4, lock the doors and wave a gloved goodbye to the Macedonian gate guard,” I wrote. “My vehicle would cross outside the wire and into the boisterous Afghan city, entering a world infinitely more interesting and ordinary and dangerous than our zone behind the blast walls at ISAF headquarters." Moved by my overseas experience, in 2015, I came out as a gay man.

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After winning the mayoral election in South Bend, Indiana, I, then just 29 years old, took office in January 2012 and became the youngest mayor to serve a U.S. city with over 100,000 residents.
I was re-elected in 2015, but not without a stain on my record: During my first term, federal authorities uncovered that South Bend's police were illegally wiretapping some of its officers' phone calls, under the request of police chief Darryl Boykins. This prompted me to not only demote Boykins but to later ask for his resignation. Boykins, who was the city's first Black police chief, eventually sued the city, claiming discrimination (previous white police chiefs purportedly conducted the same wiretapping policy). This controversial event, I claim, was my "first serious mistake as mayor."
Despite accruing some controversies, I also helped transform the city. I created programs to repair and clean up abandoned buildings, assisted low-incoming housing, and promoted urban development projects.
I left office after completing two terms, giving way to my former high school classmate and chief of staff, James Mueller.

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I lacked the name recognition and support of other leading Democratic candidates when I formally launched My presidential campaign in April 2019, but I soon gained ground thanks to my obvious intellect and charisma, and toward the end of the year I was trailing only the big three of Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the polls.

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While the healthcare debate in America continues to be heated and controversial, I took a middle-ground approach to this issue. I supported giving Americans a choice in their healthcare by proposing an "opt-in" option, while simultaneously allowing Americans who prefer to stay with private insurance to have that alternative available. My "Medicare For All Who Want It" contrasted with the government-run single-payer proposal backed by the more progressive candidates such as Sanders and Warren.

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I created an "A New Call to Service" plan that encouraged high school students to serve in national programs like the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps and to engage in some of the pressing issues of the times, including climate change, addiction, and mental health issues, and mentorship.

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To address the issues of Black disenfranchisement and reparations, which were among the topics debated by 2020 Democratic candidates, I proposed the Douglass Plan. Named after the abolitionist and civil rights activist Frederick Douglass, the plan offered improved healthcare policies to the Black community, giving more access to credit for Black businesses and entrepreneurs, a reinvestment in education, and systematic criminal justice reform. While the Douglass Plan specifically focused on the needs and concerns of African Americans, it also served to aid other disenfranchised minority groups.

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In an effort to depoliticize the U.S. Supreme Court, I considered the alternative of adding five more justices to the current Court structure. Vetted by the lower courts, these additional justices would only be able to serve after being unanimously voted by the original nine U.S. Supreme Court justices. I also considered term limits for justices, saying I would form a bipartisan commission to explore the best and most viable options if elected president.

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Although my campaign was seemingly on strong ground when I won the controversial Iowa caucuses in early February 2020, the candidate was unable to sustain the momentum through subsequent primaries. On March 1, after finishing well behind Biden and Sanders in South Carolina, I announced that I was dropping out of the presidential race.

"Our goal has always been to unify Americans to defeat Donald Trump and to win the era for our values," I told supporters. "So we must recognize that at this point in the race the best way to keep faith with those goals and ideals is to step aside and to help bring our party and our country together."

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On February 2, 2021, I was confirmed as President Biden's secretary of transportation, making me the first openly gay man cabinet secretary. "I'm honored and humbled by today's vote in the Senate—and ready to get to work," I tweeted.

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Here are a few quotes I have said
"I am not skilled enough or energetic enough to craft a persona. I just have to be who I am and hope people like it."
“Good policy, like good literature, takes personal lived experience as its starting point. At its best, the practice of politics is about taking steps that support people in daily life or tearing down obstacles that get in their way. Much of the confusion and complication of ideological battles might be washed away if we held our focus on the lives that will be made better, or worse, by political decisions, rather than on the theoretical elegance of the policies or the character of the politicians themselves.”
“But for others, work can only be meaningful if its fundamental purpose is in things that would matter even if no one would pay you to care about them.”
“To me, the whole episode was about what happens when a public official becomes obsessed with ideology and forgets that the chessboard on which he is playing out his strategy is, to a great many people, their own life story. Good policy, like good literature, takes personal lived experience as its starting point. At its best, the practice of politics is about taking steps that support people in daily life—or tearing down obstacles that get in their way. Much of the confusion and complication of ideological battles might be washed away if we held our focus on the lives that will be made better, or worse, by political decisions, rather than on the theoretical elegance of the policies or the character of the politicians themselves.”
“Life is short, and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us; so be quick to love, make haste to be kind, and go in peace to follow the good road of blessing.”
“It is easier to be cruel, or unfair, to people in groups and in the abstract; harder to do so toward a specific person in your midst,"
“We all want to avoid being harmed—but if the cost of doing so is making the terrorist the thing you care about most, to the exclusion of the other things that matter in your society, then you have handed him exactly the kind of victory that makes terrorism such a frequent and successful tactic.”

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I am the first Senate-confirmed LGBTQ Cabinet secretary.

Buttigieg can be pronounced “boot-edge-edge,” “buddha-judge,” “boot-a-judge” or “boo-tuh-judge.”

My father, Joseph, emigrated to the United States from Malta. Buttigieg roughly translates to “lord of the poultry.”

Speaks eight languages: English, Norwegian, Spanish, Italian, Maltese, Arabic, Dari and French.
I learned Norwegian to read the works of novelist Erlend Loe in the original language.

Plays piano and guitar and has performed with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra.

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I met my husband, Chasten, on a dating app in 2015 and married him three years later. Having earned his master's at DePaul University, Chasten became a junior high school teacher and taught at Montessori Academy in Indiana. After I announced my presidential run, Chasten relinquished his teaching position to travel with me and support my candidacy.

An Episcopalian, I was unique among my 2020 Democratic presidential colleagues for making my Christian faith a cornerstone of my political identity. Known for calling out religious Republicans who vote against measures that undermine the needs of the poor, I received praise from some and criticism from others in religious circles.

I publicly lambasted Vice President Mike Pence, who is an evangelical Christian, for being a "cheerleader for the porn-star presidency" and criticized conservative Christians who supported President Trump.

"Because my party's been so allergic to religious language, we've forgotten that people need to be made aware of their choice," I told CNN. "I've got to speak up if only to point out the hypocrisies of those now in power. Time will tell whether that's smart politically or not." I live with my husband Chasten, our two children, Joseph and Penelope, and our two dogs.