Stacey Abrams

Stacey Abrams was the 2018 and 2022 Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia, losing in the general election both times. She was the first African-American female major-party gubernatorial nominee in the United States, and the first African-American woman as well as the first and only non-office-holding person to deliver a response to the State of the Union address (on February 5, 2019).

Abrams was born on December 9, 1973, in Madison, Wisconsin. She was raised in Gulfport, Mississippi, but the family later moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where she attended high school.

Abrams earned her Bachelor of Arts in interdisciplinary studies from Spelman College, her M.P.A. in public policy from the University of Texas, and her J.D. from Yale Law School. She began her political career in 2002 when she was appointed deputy city attorney. In 2007, she was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives, becoming House minority leader in 2011. After losing her first gubernatorial run, Abrams founded Fair Fight 2020, an organization with the goal of helping Democrats build voter protection teams.

Abrams serves on the board of directors for a number of boards, and has published several fiction books and nonfiction books and articles, under a pseudonym and her own name. In April 2023, she was named the inaugural Ronald W. Walters Endowed Chair for Race and Black Politics at Howard University, with her appointment beginning in September 2023.