Pete Buttigieg [photo credit: Distinguished Speaker Series]
On Wednesday, the former U.S. Secretary of Transportation will take the stage at a sold-out Pasadena Civic Auditorium, drawing a capacity crowd of 3,000 to the historic venue at 300 E. Green St. The event, which begins at 7:30 p.m., is part of the series’ 29th season in Pasadena.
“When we surveyed our audience last year, he was their number one pick,” said Kathy Winterhalder, co-founder of the Distinguished Speaker Series. “So then we reached out to him and made him an offer to see if he would be a part of our speaker series this year.”
Buttigieg served as the nation’s 19th Secretary of Transportation from 2021 to 2025, becoming the first openly gay person confirmed by the Senate to serve in a president’s Cabinet, according to his official Department of Transportation biography. He was confirmed by a vote of 86-13 and sworn in on February 3, 2021. During his tenure, he oversaw a department of 55,000 employees and worked to implement the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, expand airline passenger protections, and address pandemic-related supply chain disruptions, according to series promotional materials.
Before joining the Biden administration, Buttigieg served two terms as mayor of his hometown of South Bend, Indiana. He was first elected in 2011 at age 29. He also served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, taking a leave of absence from the mayor’s office in 2014 to deploy to Afghanistan, according to his official biography, which describes his service as spanning seven years.
In 2020, Buttigieg ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. He led the Iowa caucuses in state delegate equivalents and finished second in the New Hampshire primary, becoming the first openly gay candidate to win delegates in a major-party presidential contest.
A Harvard graduate and Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, Buttigieg’s Pasadena talk will focus on contemporary political leadership, according to series organizers, who describe the evening as an exploration of “what this moment demands from leaders in policy, politics, and communication.”
The Distinguished Speaker Series, founded in 1996 by sisters Winterhalder and Sue Swan through their Manhattan Beach-based Swan Productions LLC, structures each evening around a one-hour presentation followed by a 30-minute moderated question-and-answer session. The 2025-2026 Pasadena season also features National Geographic explorer Ella Al-Shamahi, former Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, Yale professor Laurie Santos, sportscaster Bob Costas, and Dr. Anthony Fauci.
The Pasadena Civic Auditorium, a Mediterranean Revival venue that opened in 1932, has served as the series’ Pasadena home since 1997.
Wednesday’s event is available through series subscriptions only; individual tickets are not available. For information, call (310) 546-6222 or visit www.speakersla.com.
“Seeing all your friends and neighbors there — often different ages, different political persuasions — is just really something special,” Winterhalder said. “There really isn’t anything like it.”
