John Cranley has devoted his life to helping others and implementing real-world change. His father, a Vietnam veteran, and his mother, a school teacher, taught him the values of faith, service, integrity, and making the world a better place. Raised in the Price Hill neighborhood of Cincinnati, John attended St. Williams Elementary School and St. Xavier High School. He then went on to earn his undergraduate degree from John Carroll University and graduate from Harvard Law School and Harvard Divinity School.

​Motivated by a deep sense of social justice, John co-founded the Ohio Innocence Project in 2002, which by using DNA technology has exonerated and freed 33 wrongfully convicted people.

John Cranley was elected Mayor of Cincinnati in 2013 and since then has led an unprecedented revitalization of his city; Cincinnati has shown positive population growth for the first time in 60 years. In 2021, the Milken Institute ranked Cincinnati as the best performing city in Ohio, a ranking that evaluates job and wage growth, housing affordability, and high-tech GDP. Throughout his career, Cranley has led historic police reform—Cincinnati is safer while arresting fewer people annually. Under his leadership, the city has also outpaced both the nation and the state of Ohio in poverty reduction. And Mayor Cranley is spearheading an effort to invest in solar energy to reduce the city’s carbon footprint and make Cincinnati a leader in clean energy.