Today’s guest is Reno Mayor, Hillary Schieve.

Hillary Schieve is an American businesswoman and politician from Reno, Nevada. She has served as mayor of Reno since 2014 and as President of the United States Conference of Mayors since 2023, becoming the first independent politician to hold this position.

In 2017, Schieve was named by Politico as one of the 11 most interesting mayors in America, citing her work to revitalize the MidTown District of Reno and continued efforts to promote affordable housing, mental health services, and the fight against homelessness.

Mayor Schieve and I got into all sorts of topics including: how she got into politics, her passion for the arts, the housing crisis in Reno, the complexity of the homelessness issue, her passion for mental health and her personal relationship to it, the potential for novel approaches to mental health treatment including psychedelics, why she identifies as non-partisan, her work as President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, our mutual admiration for Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, the upcoming presidential election, the Reno Heartbeat song and video project from 2020 and a few other topics. Regardless of your politics, I hope you get a sense of Mayor Schieve as a person through this conversation. She was certainly a joy to talk to.

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