Johnson College has selected Paige Gebhardt Cognetti, Mayor of the City of Scranton to give their 2020 commencement address to graduates on Saturday, May 16th, 2020 at 10 A.M. at the Theater at North.
Mayor Cognetti is the newly-elected Mayor of the City of Scranton and the first female to hold the position. She came from her role as Special Assistant to the Pennsylvania Auditor General, the chief fiscal watchdog of the commonwealth. She advised on financial management, governance and transparency. Her areas of focus included public school districts, care for older adults, criminal justice reform and student debt.
Mayor Cognetti previously served as a director on the Scranton School Board, overseeing a $160M budget and helping navigate the district’s dual crises of financial distress and public mistrust.
Before moving to Northeastern Pennsylvania, Mayor Cognetti lived in New York and worked as an investment advisor at Goldman Sachs, sourcing new assets and managing investment portfolios for private business. Prior to this private sector work, she served in the Obama administration from 2009-2012 as a senior advisor to the Under Secretary for International Affairs at the U.S. Treasury Department. She has been a fundraiser and project director on numerous democratic political campaigns. Mayor Cognetti holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Oregon Clark Honors College with a BA in English Literature and Romance Languages.
Mayor Cognetti is originally from Beaverton, Oregon. She lives in Scranton with her husband, Ryan, and their daughter, Sloane.