John S. Bennett

John Bennett moved to Aspen in the early 1970s and spent 25 years owning and managing Aspen businesses, including Pour la France Bakery & Cafe, a small restaurant chain. In the 1990s, Bennett moved to the public sector, serving four terms as Aspen’s mayor and overseeing a $40 million budget that produced a surplus each year he was in office.

After retiring as mayor, he devoted his time to the non-profit world, serving as vice president of the Aspen Institute, co-founder of the Cordoba Initiative, president of For The Forest, and director of the Aspen Community Foundation’s Cradle to Career Initiative, where he worked to increase youth success for low-income children across Aspen’s region of western Colorado. Bennett chaired the Pitkin County-Aspen Airport Vision Committee’s successful effort to achieve community consensus on a $400 million plan for a new airport, easing decades of acrimony over the issue. He currently co-chairs the Aspen Institute’s Community Forum on Transportation.

Bennett is an Honorary Member of the Aspen Center for Physics. He is also president of Garcitas Bennett Partners, LLC, a family ranch that is now developing a utility-scale solar farm in Texas. In a retrospective on a century of Aspen’s long and colorful history, Aspen Magazine named Bennett one of “40 lives that left their mark in making Aspen the iconic and cultural resort town we know today.” He is married to Janie Joseland Bennett. They have one daughter. Bennett is a graduate of Yale University.