Mary-Pat Hector was born in Atlanta and graduated from Spelman College and Georgia State University. She began community organizing at the age of 12. At the age of 18, she was one of the youngest community leaders to advise President Barack Obama on criminal justice reform in the Oval Office. By the age of 19, she became the youngest woman and person of color to run for public office in the state of Georgia, losing by only 22 votes, which prompted her to found Equity for All, an ecosystem to train young leaders to run for office and seek equal representation opportunities.

 

Hector serves as CEO of Rise,  an organization that trains and hires students to organize campaigns focused on eliminating tuition and fees, expanding financial aid, ending student hunger and homelessness, and getting out the vote. More than 250,000 students and supporters from colleges and universities nationwide lead the organizations to work. 

 

 Mary-Pat Hector also serves as an active member of Black Youth Vote Georgia, an organization mobilizing college students to participate in civic engagement. Through her work, she assisted in getting over 500,000 Georgians registered to vote!  Her efforts as a member of the organization can be seen on Hulu’s “1619 Project”.

 

Mary-Pat has also led and organized hunger strikes that have gained over 75,000 meals for students at HBCUs, developing an initiative to end student hunger on college campuses. She has also organized rallies to end police violence in communities of color and developed youth entrepreneurship programming to assist hundreds of young people in kickstarting licensed businesses. 
 

Not content to rest on her accomplishments, Mary-Pat Serves as the advisor to the King Center on Advocacy and Strategic Partnerships; she is the youngest board member of Headcount.Org, a non-partisan organization that uses the power of music to register voters and promote participation in democracy, as well as a founding board member of Facebook’s State of Youth board and a board member of EAT, a global, non-profit startup dedicated to transforming our global food system through sound science, impatient disruption, and novel partnerships.