Pete Buttigieg is an American politician and erstwhile military officer. Interested in politics from a young age, Buttigieg was honored by members of President Kennedy's family during his senior year of high school for a remarkable essay that he wrote. Soon, he was selected as an Indiana delegate to the United States Senate Youth Program. He then attended the Harvard University from where he graduated with a BA in Literature and History. During this time, he also worked for Jill Long Thompson's congressional campaign. After his graduation, he started working for William Cohen, former U.S. Secretary of Defense. He was also involved in John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. Shortly after, Buttigieg was commissioned as a naval intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve. He was deployed for several months in the Middle East, where he was a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. After being elected as Mayor of South Bend in November 2011, he assumed office the next year, thus becoming the youngest mayor of a U.S. city with at least 100,000 residents. In April 2019, Pete Buttigieg officially announced that he would be running for the 2020 Presidential elections. He was appointed the US Secretary of Transportation in 2021.