Early Life and Education
Ellis was born and raised in Houston, Texas. Growing up in Houston’s Southeast district, he is one of three children of Eligha and Oliver Teresa Ellis. His father worked as a yard man and his mother a maid, and each worked as health care assistants. In the summers, Ellis served as his father's assistant.
Ellis attended B.H. Grimes Elementary and Carter G. Woodson Middle School and is a graduate of Evan E. Worthing High School, where he was president of the student council. He enrolled at Xavier University in Louisiana before returning to Texas and graduating from Texas Southern University with a Bachelor of Science degree in political science. Ellis earned his Masters in Public Affairs from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas and then a law degree from the University of Texas School of Law. Ellis also studied at the London School of Economics.
While in Austin, Ellis got experience in Texas government, working as an aide to Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby and as Law Clerk to Chief Justice John C. Phillips on the Third Court of Appeals. Ellis also served as legal counsel to Texas Railroad Commissioner Buddy Temple before moving to Washington, DC to become Chief of Staff to U.S. Representative Mickey Leland.
It was through Congressman Leland that Ellis first met his future wife Licia. They were married in 1997. Their family includes four children: Nicole, Maria, Leland, and Alena.
Read more about this topic: Rodney Ellis
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or education:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“I looked at my daughters, and my boyhood picture, and appreciated the gift of parenthood, at that moment, more than any other gift I have ever been given. For what person, except one’s own children, would want so deeply and sincerely to have shared your childhood? Who else would think your insignificant and petty life so precious in the living, so rich in its expressiveness, that it would be worth partaking of what you were, to understand what you are?”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo, not for a man.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“A good education ought to help people to become both more receptive to and more discriminating about the world: seeing, feeling, and understanding more, yet sorting the pertinent from the irrelevant with an ever finer touch, increasingly able to integrate what they see and to make meaning of it in ways that enhance their ability to go on growing.”
—Laurent A. Daloz (20th century)