Patrick, Deval, 1956-

<p>Deval Patrick was born in Chicago, Illinois on July 31, 1956. His father, a musician, left the family while Patrick was young. Patrick was raised by his mother near the Robert Taylor Homes on Chicago's South Side. While in the eighth grade, Patrick was recruited into a program called A Better Chance, which provided scholarships to inner city students. After attending an elite private school, Milton Academy outside of Boston, Massachusetts, Patrick was accepted to Harvard University, where he earned his A.B. degree in English and American literature in 1978.</p>

<p>After graduating from Harvard, Patrick was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship, where he worked for the United Nations, traveling and living in the Sudan. He returned to the United States in 1979, and enrolled in Harvard Law School, and earned his J.D. degree in 1982. After working as a clerk in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Los Angeles for a year, Patrick moved to New York City and joined the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. There, he met, and filed a lawsuit in a voting rights case against then Governor Bill Clinton He remained with the NAACP until 1986, when he joined the Boston law firm of Hill & Barlow, P.C. as a partner. He continued his civil rights work, and in 1994, President Clinton appointed Patrick to the position of assistant attorney general in charge of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. In this role, Patrick worked to ensure that federal laws banning discrimination were enforced. He also oversaw an investigation into a series of church burnings throughout the South.</p>

<p>In 1997, after three years with the Clinton Administration, Patrick returned to private practice with the Boston law firm of Day, Berry & Howard, where he focused his efforts on major commercial litigation and civil rights compliance issues. Patrick then joined Texaco in 1999 as vice president and general counsel, and in 2001, he became executive vice president, general counsel and secretary to the Coca-Cola Company, where he was responsible for the corporation's worldwide legal affairs. Patrick left Coca-Cola in December of 2004.</p>

<p>Governor Deval Patrick was sworn in as governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on January 4, 2007, and was sworn in for a second term on January 6, 2011.</p>

<p>After earning his law degree, Patrick served as a law clerk to a federal appellate judge before joining the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund as a staff attorney. In 1986, he joined the Boston law firm of Hill & Barlow and was named partner in 1990, at the age of 34. In 1994, President Clinton appointed Patrick Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, the nation’s top civil rights post. At the Justice Department, Patrick worked on a wide range of issues, including prosecution of hate crimes, and the enforcement of employment discrimination, fair lending and disabilities rights laws.</p>

<p>In 1997, Patrick was appointed the first chairperson of Texaco’s Equality and Fairness Task Force where he led a company-wide effort to create a more equitable workplace environment. Patrick later served as Texaco’s Vice President and General Counsel, leading the company’s global legal affairs, and as Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of the Coca-Cola Company, a member of the company’s senior leadership team.</p>

<p>Patrick graduated from Harvard College in 1978 and earned his law degree from Harvard Law School. Diane and Deval Patrick have been married for more than 25 years and have two adult daughters.</p>

<p>Deval Laurdine Patrick (born July 31, 1956) is an American politician, civil rights lawyer, author, and businessman who served as the 71st governor of Massachusetts from 2007 to 2015. He was first elected in 2006, succeeding Mitt Romney, who chose not to run for reelection to focus on his presidential campaign. He was reelected in 2010. He was the first African American Governor of Massachusetts. A Democrat, Patrick served from 1994 to 1997 as the United States Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division under President Bill Clinton. He was briefly a candidate for President of the United States in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.</p>

<p>Raised largely by a single mother on the South Side of Chicago, Patrick earned a scholarship to Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts in the eighth grade. He went on to attend Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. After graduating, he practiced law with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and later joined a Boston law firm, where he was named a partner at age 34. In 1994, Bill Clinton appointed him as the United States assistant attorney general for the civil rights division of the United States Department of Justice, where he worked on issues including racial profiling and police misconduct.</p>

<p>During his governorship, Patrick oversaw the implementation of the state's 2006 health care reform program which had been enacted under Mitt Romney, increased funding to education and life sciences, won a federal Race to the Top education grant, passed an overhaul of governance of the state transportation function, signing a law to create the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, increased the state sales tax from 5% to 6.25%, raised the state's minimum wage from $8 per hour to $11 by 2017, and planned the introduction of casinos to the state. Under Patrick, Massachusetts joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Shortly after Patrick's second term began on January 6, 2011, he declared he would not seek re-election in 2014.</p>

<p>Patrick is a managing director at Bain Capital and serves as the chairman of the board for Our Generation Speaks, a fellowship program and startup incubator whose mission is to bring together young Israeli and Palestinian leaders through entrepreneurship. He also holds a Board of Directors position at telehealth company American Well.</p>