Deval Laurdine Patrick, born to a single mother who traced her lineage to enslaved people in Kentucky and a jazz musician father who abandoned the family when he was a toddler, rose from the Robert Taylor Homes public housing projects on Chicago's South Side to national prominence as an American politician, civil rights attorney, and business executive. He earned a scholarship to the elite Milton Academy and became the first in his family to attend college at Harvard. His early legal career focused on voting rights and death penalty cases at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, followed by high-profile work as a partner at Boston firms and as U.S. Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division under President Bill Clinton, where he defended affirmative action and investigated church burnings. Patrick served as the 71st Governor of Massachusetts from 2007 to 2015, the first African American to hold the office and the second elected African American governor in U.S. history. His career spans significant roles in both the public and private sectors, including senior executive positions at Texaco and The Coca-Cola Company, and being appointed by Governor Patrick to various public safety leadership roles in Massachusetts. Following his governorship, he entered the private equity sector, joining Bain Capital to lead its Double Impact fund, and became a pioneer in impact investing. He briefly ran for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 U.S. presidential election before returning to various roles in academia and finance. As of 2024, he serves as a Senior Partner at The Vistria Group and has previously held the David R. Gergen Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership chair at the Harvard Kennedy School.