Wes Moore

Westley Watende Omari Moore became the first Black governor in the history of Maryland when he was inaugurated on January 18, 2023 — and only the third Black person elected governor of any U.S. state, after Douglas Wilder of Virginia (1989) and Deval Patrick of Massachusetts (2006). He won by the largest margin of any Maryland gubernatorial candidate in over 40 years.

Born in Takoma Park, Maryland, in 1978, Moore's father died when he was three years old, and his mother raised him in the Bronx. After struggling as a teenager, he was sent to Valley Forge Military Academy, which changed his trajectory. He attended Johns Hopkins University as the first Black Rhodes Scholar from the institution, earned his master's from Oxford, and served as a captain in the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan.

Moore's 2010 book, The Other Wes Moore, compared his life with that of another man named Wes Moore from Baltimore who ended up serving a life sentence for murder. The book became a bestseller and is widely used in schools and universities. Before his election, Moore served as CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation, one of the largest poverty-fighting organizations in America. As governor, he has focused on ending childhood poverty, expanding economic opportunity, and criminal justice reform.