Early Life and Education
Thomas Edward Perez was born and raised in Buffalo, New York, to parents Rafael and Grace (née Brache) Perez, who were both first generation Dominican immigrants. His father Rafael, who earned U.S. citizenship after enlisting in the U.S. Army after World War II, worked as a doctor in Atlanta, Georgia before moving to Buffalo where he worked as a physician at a VA hospital. His mother Grace, who came to the United States in 1930 after her father, Rafael Brache, was appointed as the Dominican Republic's Ambassador to the United States, remained in the U.S. after Ambassador Brache was declared persona non grata by his own government, for speaking out against Dominican President Rafael Trujillo's regime. Perez, who was the youngest of four brother and sisters (who all followed their father in becoming doctors), suffered the loss of their father when he died of a heart attack, when Perez was 12 years old. He graduated from Canisius High School, an all men's Roman Catholic Jesuit private school, in 1979.
Perez received his Bachelor of Arts in international relations and political science from Brown University in 1983. He also received his Juris Doctor cum laude from Harvard Law School and a Master of Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1987. While attending Brown, Perez put himself through college with the help of scholarships and pell grants, while also working as a trash collector and in a warehouse to help pay for the cost of his tuition. Later gaining a position working in Brown University's dining hall. During his time at Harvard Law, Perez worked as a law clerk for then Attorney General Edwin Meese in 1986.
Read more about this topic: Thomas Perez
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”
—Eudora Welty (b. 1909)
“At last a vision has been vouchsafed to us of our life as a whole. We see the bad with the good.... With this vision we approach new affairs. Our duty is to cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the good, to purify and humanize every process of our common life, without weakening or sentimentalizing it.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Do we honestly believe that hopeless kids growing up under the harsh new rules will turn out to be chaste, studious, responsible adults? On the contrary, by limiting welfare, job training, education and nutritious food, won’t we plant the seeds for another bumper crop of out-of-wedlock moms, deadbeat dads and worse?”
—Richard B. Stolley (20th century)