Researching Jeff Lehman

Jeff Lehman is the 46th mayor of the City of Barrie. Mayor Lehman represented Barrie's Ward 2 as a councillor from 2006-2010 before being elected mayor in 2010. From 2014-2017, Lehman chaired Ontario's Big City Mayors' Caucus (LUMCO), representing Ontario's 28 largest cities. He was re-elected in 2018 with 91% of the popular vote.

As the head of council, he is leading Barrie through a period of rapid change. During his first term in office, major new campuses were developed in Barrie by IBM, TD Bank, Cogeco, Napoleon, and others, and Barrie led all metropolitan areas east of Alberta in the rate of job creation. In 2015, Barrie was named the safest big city in the country, and in 2016 was named Canada's 3rd most entrepreneurial city, by the Financial Post. Mayor Lehman is also a founding director of Alectra, the second largest community-owned utility in North America, serving more than a million customers in southern Ontario.

Lehman holds a Chartered Director (C.Dir) designation and has served on the Boards of Directors of 8 separate organizations over his ten year career in public service, including on the Board of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. His articles concerning the future of municipalities have appeared in the Globe and Mail and industry publications and he has been a frequent keynote speaker at conferences, focusing particularly on innovation in the public sector and the intersection of business, community, and government. He liaises frequently and directly with senior government both on behalf of his municipality and on behalf of the municipal sector. In 2017, he was awarded the Gil Bennett Award by the Conference Board of Canada for excellence in corporate governance education through the Director's College. He was also named the 2017 Community Leader Influencer of the Year by the Economic Developers Council of Ontario. In 2019, the prestigious US business magazine Fast Company named Lehman number 26 in its top 100 Most Creative People in Business for his innovative solutions in government.

He holds a B.A. from Queen's University, and a Master's Degree with first class honours from the UK's London School of Economics, where he lectured for two years following graduation. As an economist, he worked with cities across the country to manage redevelopment and invest in their urban infrastructure during a ten year career as a consultant before entering public life. Mayor Lehman is a passionate believer in transforming urban economies through public and private entrepreneurship.