Deval Patrick

American lawyer and politician, Governor of Massachusetts from January 2007. Patrick grew up in an underprivileged violence-ridden South Side of Chicago. Despite the turbulence in his neighborhood, he was a good student, and, in 1970 he won a scholarship to a private boarding school in Massachusetts. He was admitted to Harvard and graduated with honors. After a year of working on a United Nations project in Darfur, he entered Harvard Law, graduating in 1979. With his law degree in hand, Patrick landed a job as a law clerk to a federal appellate judge. He then had a stint at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. In 1986, he joined the Boston law firm of Hill & Barlow, making partner in 1990. Six years later, he was tapped by President Bill Clinton to serve as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. Patrick left Washington in 1997, taking a position in another Boston law firm. That same year he was appointed Chair of Texaco's Equality and Fairness Task Force. Texaco took him on as an employee in 1999 where he served as Vice President and General Counsel. Two years later, Coca-Cola hired him as the company's Executive Vice President and General Counsel. On November 7, 2006 he won election to the office of governor of Massachusetts in a landslide victory. He was the first African-American Governor of Massachusetts and only the second black governor in the US. He took office in January 2007. He and his wife Diane, also a lawyer, have two children. Link to Wikipedia biography