Joseph Patrick Kennedy III was born on October 4, 1980 in Brighton, MA. As the son of former Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II, grandson of former senator and attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, and the great-nephew of President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Ted Kennedy, Joe was born into a political dynasty. After graduating from the Buckingham Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge, Kennedy attended Stanford University, where he majored in management science and engineering. After graduating in 2003, Kennedy joined the Peace Corps. A fluent speaker of Spanish, he worked in the Dominican Republic from 2004 to 2006 before returning to Massachusetts, where he and his fraternal twin brother Matthew co-chaired Ted Kennedy’s re-election campaign. In 2006, Joe enrolled in Harvard Law School and worked for the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, providing legal aid to low-income tenants in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. He began an internship at the Cape and Islands District Attorney’s Office in 2008. After receiving his J.D. degree from Harvard Law in 2009, Joe worked as an assistant district attorney for the Cape and Islands Office. In 2011, he joined the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office, also working as an assistant DA. In 2012, Kennedy was elected to represent Massachusetts’s 4th congressional district, filling the seat of Congressman Barney Frank upon his retirement.

Currently in his third term, Joe is a member of the influential House Energy & Commerce Committee and focuses on issues like mental health and addiction, energy costs, and STEM education. Joe has emerged as a powerful voice for social justice, championing issues like transgender rights, marriage equality, pay equity, and immigration reform. In January 2018, Joe rose to national prominence after delivering the official Democratic response to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address. Joe currently lives in Newton with his wife, Lauren, their kids, Eleanor and James, and their dog, Banjo.