Ben Jealous is a civil rights leader, community organizer, investor in startups for good, educator, former investigative journalist and a Rhodes Scholar who has spent his life bringing people together to get big things done.

He specializes in building diverse coalitions for change and has extensive experience as a non-profit leader, serving as the past president of the Rosenberg Foundation and the founding director of Amnesty International’s U.S. Domestic Human Rights Program.

At age 35, Mr. Jealous was named the youngest ever President and CEO of the NAACP. Under Ben’s leadership, the NAACP underwent an unprecedented era of growth. Ben used his background as a community organizer and executive to press the NAACP forward in expanding and protecting the civil rights of all Americans. The NAACP opened national programs focused on education, health and environmental justice and worked on issues related to the economy and voting rights.

Mr. Jealous is a graduate of Columbia and Oxford University and comes from a long line of activists. His mother desegregated Baltimore’s Western High School for Girls in 1954 as a member of the NAACP’s Youth and College Division. His father was one of a small number of white men jailed during the Congress of Racial Equality’s efforts to desegregate Baltimore’s downtown business district. He is the proud father of two children who attend public schools.

Come back later this fall for Mr. Jealous’s PerSpectives article on Unity and Division!