Aaron Thomas
January 21, 2021 — People
President and CEO, Accelerator for America
Aaron is President and CEO of Accelerator for America, a national nonprofit co-founded by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2017. Guided by a network of mayors, labor leaders, corporate CEOs and nonprofit executives from across the country, the Accelerator’s mission is to find and develop solutions to economic insecurity and share them with cities to create national change from the ground up.
Since its founding, the Accelerator has developed community wealth-building tools that are being used by more than 70 cities nationwide, and it has helped local communities generate more than $30 billion in funding for transit and transportation infrastructure through local ballot initiatives. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it developed a financial assistance model in Los Angeles that distributed $37 million to help people who lost income as a result of COVID-19, and this model is now being adapted by two states and eight cities nationwide. It is also leading the development of place-based recovery playbooks to help cities rebuild and recover from the pandemic.