Eugene Grant

Mayor at City of Seat Pleasant, MD

Speaker

Mayor Eugene W. Grant has been leading the City of Seat Pleasant, MD through successful innovative methods and providing executive municipal leadership since 2004.

In 2017, Mayor Grant signed an agreement with IBM to build a $30 million cloud-based, Intelligent Operations Center in the City of Seat Pleasant, a Smart City of Excellence. This multi-year endeavor will elevate Seat Pleasant to become the FIRST authentic small Smart City in the world.

In addition to this significant accomplishment, Mayor Grant successfully petitioned the United States Department of Agriculture to designate Seat Pleasant as a “Rural Community,” potentially giving the city access to millions of dollars of federal grants and funding. Because of the Mayor’s continual efforts, he is currently using $4.1 million in Rural Development financing to remodel City Hall and the Maintenance Building into Smart Buildings.

Mayor Grant has automated the city’s Finance Department, increasing accountability and transparency to the citizens. Seat Pleasant is also the first small city in the state of Maryland to utilize Budgeting for Outcomes, which has improved the effectiveness and efficiency of the Finance Department. His leadership created the opportunity for Seat Pleasant to become the first city in the country to obtain security clearance to fly police drones in the No Fly Zone over the nation’s capital, optimizing the city’s ability to provide better safety to the region during times of uncertainty.

As the principle promoter for Seat Pleasant, a Smart City of Excellence, Mayor Grant has presented his vision for a center of innovation, information, and investment in front of some of the world’s leading tech companies, emerging tech companies specializing in the Internet of Things and potential impact and social impact investors and angel investors.

In 2017, Mayor Grant has promoted the city as a model for other small cities, towns, and villages at the United Nations Headquarters in New York; spoken at panels at Smart Cities Week in California and Washington, D.C. and with the American Association of Blacks in Energy; presented the FIRST ever TEDx Talk presentation in the history of the Maryland Municipal Summer Conference; and, presented potential strategic partnerships with Harrisburg University and Oklahoma University to continue to build upon the foundation establishing Seat Pleasant as a Smart City of Excellence.

To date, Mayor Grant has been able to represent the City of Seat Pleasant and our Smart City transformation during his travels to Texas, California, Florida, China, Canada; just to name a few. Because of his efforts, Seat Pleasant is successfully known as the first Authentic Small Smart City across the globe.