About our Founder and Chairman
Originally from the South Side of Chicago, Patrick was awarded a scholarship at 14 to Milton Academy through the Boston-based organization A Better Chance.
After Harvard College and Harvard Law School, he clerked for a federal appellate judge and then launched a career as an attorney and business executive, becoming a staff attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the Clinton administration, a partner at two Boston law firms and a senior executive at two Fortune 50 companies.
In 2006, in his first bid for elective office, he became Massachusetts’ first African-American governor.
During his eight year tenure, Patrick helped revive a battered economy through the expansion of affordable health care, unprecedented investments in Massachusetts public schools and public infrastructure, and initiatives stimulating clean energy and biotechnology. Under his leadership, Massachusetts extended health care to over 98 percent of its residents, won a national Race to the Top educational grant, steered the state to a 25-year high in employment, and ranked first in the nation in student achievement, energy efficiency, veterans services, and entrepreneurship.
From April 2015 to December 2019, he founded and built an impact investment fund at Bain Capital, where he focused on investments that deliver both a competitive financial return and significant positive social impact. He continues to invest in stakeholder models of mission driven business as a Senior Advisor to Bain Capital and a board member.
He is the Founder & Chairman of TogetherFUND, a political action committee to support progressive politics and grassroots groups working to drive turnout and engagement among disenfranchised and marginalized voters. He continues this work as co-chair of American Bridge 21st Century through its Bridge Together initiative.
Patrick is a Rockefeller Fellow, a Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute, and the author of two books, A Reason to Believe: Lessons from an Improbable Life and Faith in the Dream: A Call to the Nation to Reclaim American Values. He lives in Western Massachusetts with his wife Diane, his dogs and his bees.
About our Founder and Chairman
Deval Patrick has devoted his life to lifting the voices of others. Born on the South Side of Chicago, he grew up with his mother, sister and grandparents in their grandparents’ two bedroom tenement, much of that time on welfare. Through the love and support of family, great teachers, adults in the neighborhood and in church, he became the first in his family to attend college and law school.
Deval has always been called to service, whether in the public or the private sector. After law school, he joined the NAACP Legal Defense Fund where he litigated voting rights and death penalty cases. Later in his career, he was appointed by President Clinton to lead the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice where he was responsible for protecting a wide variety of federal civil rights and coordinated the investigation of arsons at black churches across the South.
As a senior executive in two Fortune 50 companies, Deval worked to develop a more equitable and inclusive workplace and stood up for environmental stewardship. He founded and lead the first impact investing fund at a major private equity firm, expressly targeting both competitive financial return and social and environmental good.
In 2006, completing one of the most extraordinary political journeys in state history, Deval won a landslide victory to become Massachusetts’ first black Governor. Serving from 2007-2015, he used his time in the State House to pull together disparate factions to achieve lasting reform. As a result of his leadership, Massachusetts ranked first in the nation in student achievement, energy efficiency, health care coverage, and entrepreneurial activity. After ranking 47th in the nation for job creation under his predecessor, Massachusetts grew to a 25-year employment high and became a global center for life sciences, biotech, clean tech, and advanced manufacturing.
Throughout his service in public office and in the private sector, he has been a leader in developing solutions to the challenges we face together as communities and as a country: better education, climate change, health care, the future of work and innovation, and fundamental social and economic equity. TogetherFund is an extension of his vision of effective progressive leadership.