Austin Beutner is a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School. He is the former publisher and CEO of the Los Angeles Times and The San Diego Union-Tribune, and the first publisher to serve in both roles.
Earlier in his career, he worked at The Blackstone Group, and at age 29 became the firm’s youngest partner. He left Blackstone to serve in the US government, where he led efforts to help Russia transition to a market economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Beutner went on to found Evercore Partners and as president and co-CEO built the firm into one of the leading independent investment banks in the world.
In 2010, he accepted a $1 annual salary to serve as first deputy mayor and jobs czar for the City of Los Angeles. He currently serves on the boards of The California Nature Conservancy, the Mammoth Mountain Community Foundation, the National Park Foundation, the Pacific Council on International Relations, and the US Ski and Snowboard Team Foundation; and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
He is the former chairman of the board of CalArts and The Broad Stage. In 2012, Beutner created Vision to Learn, a nonprofit that provides free eyeglasses to children in low-income communities. Vision to Learn serves children in more than 180 cities from Honolulu to Baltimore and is the largest school-based effort of its kind in the nation. In 2018, Beutner was appointed superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District.
