André Leroux

André leads the Gateway Cities Innovation Institute at MassINC, where he convenes a network of mayors and economic development leaders from twenty-six cities. He works with these local leaders to build the statewide power of post-industrial communities and position them as regional hubs of climate-friendly development for the next fifty years.

During his career, André has worked to develop a national model for revitalizing small cities while addressing institutional racism in planning, zoning, and housing.

As the executive director of the Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance from 2007-2020, André led the successful campaign to pass landmark zoning reform legislation. During his tenure, the Commonwealth integrated smart growth criteria into agency decision-making and invested nearly $1 billion in smart growth grants to communities.

He coordinated a grassroots revitalization initiative in Lawrence, Massachusetts in the early 2000s that won state and national smart growth awards. He then established Great Neighborhoods in 2010 to bring these lessons to a regional scale. These templates informed the development of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s Working Cities program and MassDevelopment’s Transformative Development Initiative (TDI).

More recently, he helped launch the statewide Planners of Color Network in 2019 and the Racial Equity in Policy and Planning (REPP) Fellowship at Tufts University in 2021. He played a founding role in Transportation for Massachusetts and Abundant Housing Massachusetts, and has served on the planning and zoning boards for the City of Medford, MA. André launched Leroux Solutions in 2020 to help communities build stronger civic life.

Earlier in his career, André worked in the Massachusetts State House and Harvard University. He completed his bachelor’s degree at Dartmouth College and two years of graduate study at El Colegio de México in Mexico City. André has two adult children, speaks fluent Spanish, and is a member of the LGBTQ community.