Mayor Tuerk was elected Allentown’s 43rd mayor in November 2021. He has a Bachelor of Science in International Business at the College of Charleston before earning an MBA at the Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina.

In 2008, he took a position with the Allentown Economic Development Corporation, and later joined the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation. In 2020, he stepped down from his position at LVEDC to run for Mayor.

In his spare time, Mayor Tuerk is a lover of languages and a runner of marathons. He speaks Spanish, Portuguese, and French, and has spent the past three years learning Chinese. His next challenge is Arabic. He began running marathons in 2013 and has completed the distance 18 times, including New York and Chicago.