For three decades Jonathan Rewers has worked in, for, and with cities — as a planner, a designer, a chief financial officer, a chief strategy officer, and a teacher. He has run a transit agency's strategy division and its finances through a pandemic, rebuilt capital programs from paper into systems, secured more than $2 billion in competitive funding, written a new federal surface transportation act from scratch, and taught the design method behind the work to graduate students at Parsons School of Design.
At the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency he served as the agency's first Chief Strategy Officer and, before that, its Chief Financial Officer — stewarding the finances through the pandemic crisis, structuring over $1B in emergency federal relief, and restoring service without layoffs. Earlier he implemented the 2016 Project Delivery Framework, created the agency's first Project Management Office, and ran the Building Progress facilities and joint-development program.
In Sacramento he wrote the city's first Sustainability Master Plan and rebuilt Fort Natomas in six months. At Parsons he taught strategic design and new economies. As a 2024 Eisenhower Fellow he researched mega-city mobility across six Chinese cities. He now chairs the Institute for Civic Service, where the work is the craft itself — the values, methods, and judgment that let public institutions deliver.
Public service is not just a career — it is a calling.
