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Madeline Rogero

Madeline Rogero
Madeline Rogero 2015.jpg
Rogero in 2015
82nd Mayor of Knoxville
Assumed office
December 17, 2011
Preceded by Daniel Brown (interim)
Knox County Commission
In office
1990–1998
Preceded by Jesse Cawood
Personal details
Born (1952-07-26) July 26, 1952 (age 64)
Jacksonville, Florida, U.S.
Political party Democratic
Spouse(s) Gene Monaco (2001–)
Mark Pitt (divorced 1983)
Alma mater Furman University
University of Tennessee
Religion Roman Catholic

Madeline Anne Rogero (/rhɛər/)(born July 26, 1952) is the mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee, elected in 2011. She is the first woman to hold the office and the first woman to be elected mayor in any of the Big Four cities (Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga) in Tennessee. Before entering politics, Rogero worked as a community development director, non-profit executive, urban and regional planner, and community volunteer. She served on the Knox County Commission from 1990 to 1998, and first ran for mayor in 2003, losing to the current Governor of Tennessee, Bill Haslam. While Knoxville municipal elections are officially nonpartisan, Rogero is known to be a Democrat.

Rogero (the "g" is pronounced as an "h") was born in Jacksonville, Florida, one of three children of Gerald Rogero, a plumber, and Anita Ghioto, a former nun. She spent her childhood in Eau Gallie, Florida, and later in Kettering, Ohio, where she attended Archbishop Alter High School. Rogero attended Temple University and Ohio State University, before graduating with a degree in political science from Furman University in 1979.

During the mid-1970s, Rogero and her first husband, Mark Pitt, worked as organizers for César Chávez's United Farm Workers, a labor union that sought better wages for migrant farm workers. She and Pitt moved to Knoxville in 1980, where Pitt helped run the textile workers' union, Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers, now UNITE HERE. Rogero obtained a master's degree from the University of Tennessee's Graduate School of Planning, having been inspired to enter the urban planning field while helping fight an attempt by a developer to install temporary trailers in her neighborhood in anticipation of the 1982 World's Fair.


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