By AFRO Staff
As Election Day quickly approaches, the AFRO has chosen to endorse Wes Moore for Governor of Maryland ahead of the July 19 primary. Moore is running on a ticket with Aruna Miller as his Lieutenant Governor.
“I got into this race with an understanding that at this moment we have a chance in a unique generational opportunity to do better, to actually fix systems,” he said in an interview with AFRO editorial board.
Moore said his campaign is focused on “work, wages, and wealth,” along with creating economic opportunities for families in Maryland to achieve all three of these things.
Born as one of three children in Takoma Park, Md. to Joy and Westley Moore, the gubernatorial candidate spent his younger years in the Bronx with his grandparents after the death of his father. When Moore was 14, his mother found a job in Baltimore and the family moved to Pasadena, Md.
Moore attended Valley Forge Military College, where he graduated with an associate’s degree in 1998, and then graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Johns Hopkins University in 2001, with a bachelor’s degree in International Relations. He later earned a Rhodes Scholarship, which allowed him to study at Oxford University, where he completed an MLitt in International Relations.
Moore served as a captain and paratrooper with the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne. His service also included serving a tour in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2006. He then served as a special assistant to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice while he was a White House Fellow from 2006-2007.
Moore is the author of several bestselling books, the first being The Other Wes Moore. Other titkes include The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters, This Way Home and Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City.
For four years—2017 until 2021—Moore worked as CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation, one of the largest poverty-fighting organizations in the country. While serving as CEO, the foundation raised and allocated over $600 million and worked with over 1,600 different organizations.
“We continued to see and realize that if you are not addressing the systems that continue to allow people and entire communities to fall between the cracks including ones like the one I grew up in, then you will repeatedly find yourself cleaning up the debris that comes from the broken systems,” Moore said of the findings in his work with Robin Hood.
Before that, Moore founded and served as CEO of BridgeEdU, which aims to help reinvent the freshman year of college for underserved students. It is a tech platform that works to address the college completion and job placement crisis through education and awareness.
His platform is focused on issues like safety in the community, where people can feel “safe in their own homes and safe in their own skins,” fixing transportation assets, with an emphasis on the Metro’s red line, and creating a “21st Century and a world-class education system.”
Currently, Moore lives with his wife, Dawn, and two daughters in Baltimore City.
His running mate, Aruna Miller, immigrated with her family to the United States when she was seven years old. Miller graduated with a degree in civil engineering from the University of Science and Technology, and spent 25 years working for the Department of Transportation in Montgomery County.
Miller represented District 15 in the Maryland House of Delegates from 2010 until 2018. She currently lives in Montgomery County with her husband, Dave, and three daughters.
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