Governor Charlie Baker was recently re-elected to a second term in January 2019 after a successful first term that created over 200,000 new jobs in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The roots of his childhood were in Needham, Massachusetts, as he attended high school there and later became a student of the Class of 1979 at Harvard University. Fast forward to 1986, when he earned an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and thus paved the road to future positions in the public and private sector. Preceding his tenure as the Governor, Charlie Baker held positions as the Massachusetts Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Massachusetts Secretary of Administration and Finance, and the CEO of Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates and Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare. 

Growing up, the Governor listened intently at fierce dinner table debates that his parents engaged in, constantly going back and forth between their conflicting Democratic and Republican values. Now, as he works with people from both sides of the aisle, his ability to recognize multiple perspectives on a single issue contributes to his bipartisan work as a Republican governor in a traditionally blue state. His successes since the beginning of his gubernatorial career in 2015 have been both monumental and diverse in nature: They include the elimination of Massachusetts’ structural budget deficit, an impactful increase in K-12 education investments, and the advancement of the MBTA’s convenience. Evidently, his ambitions for further developing Massachusetts to be at the forefront of innovation are solidifying themselves as remarkable achievements, fueling us to push our own limits on what we can accomplish as well.