Mayor Philip Stoddard served five terms as Mayor of the City of South Miami from 2010 to 2020, choosing to step down voluntarily after a decade of service.

Mayor Stoddard was instrumental in starting solar purchasing co-ops in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties. He has overseen the most successful PACE program in Florida from which he initiated a program to provide free home insulation in low income neighborhoods. Powering his house and car from the sun, Mayor Stoddard has demonstrated that Floridians can live comfortably off-grid with solar + batteries.  Under Mayor Stoddard’s leadership, South Miami became the first state outside California to require solar power on new residential construction, and South Miami committed to 100% renewable power by 2040.

An expert on mosquito biology, Mayor Stoddard sponsored the first municipal prohibition on the use of pesticides and herbicides in public spaces (with an exception to control disease outbreaks).

Mayor Stoddard pushed successfully to complete a community pool that had been stalled for 40 years.  Affordable housing doubled under his watch, more is under construction, and new inclusive zoning incentives are in place to create significantly more.

In 2015 Mayor Stoddard was appointed by the White House to the Governance Coordinating Committee of the National Ocean Council where he developed national policy for sea level rise. In 2016 Mayor Stoddard was named by Politico Magazine to the Politico-50 “guide to the thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics in 2016.”  He was named the Green Municipal Official for 2016 by the Florida Green Building Coalition. Miami New Times named Mayor Stoddard the “Best Politician of 2017.” The Florida Sierra Club gave Dr. Stoddard the 2017 Osprey Award, “presented for extraordinary effort by a governmental staff person to promote or effect changes in policy or practice to protect or preserve Florida's environment.” In 2018, he was appointed to The CLEO Institute Expert Advisory Council.

Dr. Stoddard has been a professor of biology at Florida International University since 1992. His current research program focusses on evolution of the mechanisms by which mosquitoes evade our control.

As one of the rare scientists in public office, Mayor Stoddard became known internationally for his unvarnished explanations of sea level rise, climate change, and the inevitability of climate migration. Mayor Stoddard has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time, National Geographic, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, Stern, The Bond Buyer, NPR, PRI, BBC, MSNBC, and numerous documentaries including National Geographic’s Years of Living Dangerously which showed in 171 countries in 47 languages, and Discovery Channel’s MOSQUITO which showed in 189 countries.