Mary-Pat Hector, born in Atlanta, is a graduate of Spelman College and a current graduate student at Georgia State University. At 22-years-old Mary-Pat Hector knows how to change the world. She began community organizing at the age of 12-years-old. 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.
Mary-Pat Hector serves as a Program Strategist at Rise, Inc; an organization led by more than 40,000 students and supporters from colleges and universities across the nation. She is also the Georgia Black Youth Vote coordinator. Mary-Pat has led and organized hunger strikes that have gained more than 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 that has assisted hundreds of young people to kickstart licensed businesses.
One of her proudest accomplishments is becoming a Fellow of Peace First. She was awarded the $50,000 fellowship for her national campaign call Think Twice a national campaign that educates youth on non-violence and other issues crippling her generation. Her national campaign provides teen-safety workshops for schools, trains teens and college students in many areas of youth advocacy techniques. Not content to rest on her accomplishments, Mary-Pat speaks at high schools, colleges, conferences, women’s events, and crisis shelters across the U.S. her story inspires, and her how-to strategies give young people their own road map for changing the world.