Ivy Ruth Taylor (born June 17, 1970)[2] is the former Mayor of San Antonio, Texas from 2014 through 2017, and the former president of Rust College in Holly Springs, Mississippi from 2017 through 2023.

[1][11] In 1997, as a graduate student, Taylor participated in a ten-week internship with the San Antonio Affordable Housing Association, a coalition of affordable-housing groups.

[15] On July 22, 2014, the members of the San Antonio City Council held a special election to fill the vacant position.

Taylor had initially said that she would not run for mayor when her interim term expired in 2015;[7][8][16] however, she declared her candidacy for re-election on February 16, 2015.

Though Van de Putte narrowly led the field in the first round of balloting,[17] Taylor went on to win, 51.7%–48.3%, and hence retain her position as mayor for a full two-year term.

[23] She also helped to kill a streetcar system for downtown San Antonio, which many fiscal conservatives had opposed.

Senator John Cornyn accompanied Taylor to the 2016 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day parade in San Antonio and has urged her to join the GOP and to consider a later run for governor of Texas.

[11][25] Between 2009 and 2020, Taylor has been a guest lecturer at the University of Texas at San Antonio College of Public Policy.

[11] In February 2024, it was announced that she had accepted a role as a senior advisor to the University of North Carolina system.