Richard Irvin

Richard C. Irvin was elected the 59th Mayor of Aurora, Illinois on April 4, 2017.He is the first African-American ever to lead Illinois’ second-largest city. He was reelected for a second term on April 6, 2021, with an impressive 56% of the vote in a three-person race. Mayor Irvin graduated from East Aurora High School and enlisted in the United States Army and served in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Mayor Irvin obtained a Bachelor of Arts from Robert Morris University and a Juris Doctorate from Northern Illinois University School of Law. He practiced law as an assistant state’s attorney for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, a prosecutor for Kane County State's Attorney's Office and as a community-based prosecutor for and founder of the transformative Weed and Seed Program in Aurora before opening his private law practice in downtown Aurora. A former educator at all of his alma maters, Irvin was also an adjunct professor at Robert Morris College and Northern Illinois University and a substitute teacher at East Aurora School District 131. Irvin made history as the first African-American male elected to the Aurora City Council as an alderman-at-large. Elected for three consecutive terms, he served for 10 years - yielding the final two years of his third term when he was elected mayor in 2017.