About Me
Robert Ogilvie. (Photo by Sergio Ruiz.)Photo © Robert OgilvieI am a native of the small Caribbean Island of Grenada, and I have been an immigrant thrice, to Jamaica and then Canada as a child, and to the United States as an adult. During my lifetime my family has moved from very modest economic circumstances to financial prosperity. Before middle school, I attended six different schools in two very different cities (Kingston, Jamaica and Toronto, Ontario) and lived in four distinctly different neighborhoods. I have a B.A. from Queen’s University an M.A. from the University of South Carolina and a Ph.D. in Comparative Politics from Columbia University. I live in San Francisco and for many years I taught at the University of California, Berkeley. My life experience has compelled me to develop an ability to understand, learn from, befriend, and find common purpose with people from many economic, ethnic, and national backgrounds. As a result, I am fluent in humanity in ways that few others are.
I am the father of three young adults, and my life, and the lives of my family members, have been immeasurably enriched by the many outstanding educational institutions that we have attended and by the functional social institutions in the neighborhoods that we have lived in. Far too many people in this country are unable to say the same thing. In my life I have learned that talent and ability are randomly distributed, but that opportunity and access to the institutions and neighborhoods that people need to help them flourish are not. So, wherever I go I seek out opportunities to correct this by advocating for policies and building neighborhoods and institutions in which people can learn and grow and work together to build more prosperous lives and create a more fair and equitable society.