Dr. Bobby W. Austin
For over 40 years, Bobby W. Austin has been a recognized leader in the fields of leadership, sociology, Public Kinship, and American culture. His co-chairmanship (with Ambassador Andrew J. Young) of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Task Force on African American Men and Boys led to the groundbreaking report Repairing the Breach: Key Ways to Support Family Life, Reclaim our Streets, and Rebuild Civil Society in America’s Communities, which he authored, and which the Washington Post’s Bill Raspberry called “the plan to save America.” The 2014 Harvard Graduate School of Education conference “Revisiting Repairing the Breach” reflected on the ongoing urgency of Dr. Austin’s recommendations. From 2014 to 2024, he was President of Neighborhood Associates Corporation, a DC-based nonprofit working with a seven-state network of affordable housing communities; he raised over $1 million to build leadership capacity, social trust, and whole-family programming for 6,000 residents.
Dr. Austin is the author of many books and articles, including The Acacia Strategy; I’ll Make Me a World; and, with Andrew Young, “21st-Century Leadership in the African American Community.” He founded the Urban League Review and the Village Foundation. He has lectured on Public Kinship, common culture, peace studies, and African American men and boys around the US (including at TEDx); at the UN (where he convened the Citizens Diplomats on Race and Xenophobia, an outcome of meetings under the patronage of former Secretary General Kofi Annan); at the Salzburg Seminar (Austria); and in Hiroshima (Japan) on “Educating the World on Peace for Prosperity.” He has held the General Hal G. Moore Chair in Contemplative Leadership at the Merton Institute. In 2017, he delivered the keynote address at the opening of the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership at Churchill College, Cambridge.
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Dr. Austin is also a creative artist of long standing. In 2009, upon publication of his short story collection Circus Clowns and Carnival Animals, he was a PEN/Faulkner Author in the DC Public Schools. Juba, his Black American folklore for children TV series, aired on PBS (WETA) in 1978. With Joy Ford Austin, he wrote and produced Frederick Douglass, a docu-drama presented on the grounds of the Douglass Home and at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (1980).
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Dr. Austin is Mahatma Gandhi Fellow at the American Academy of Political and Social Science, serves on the World Board of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, and holds membership in the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Knights Hospitaller. His other affiliations include Evolutionary Leaders and the Collegium of African American Research. He has been featured on The History Makers, and is listed as one of the 50 African Americans Who Forever Changed Academia. He received his education at Western Kentucky University; Fisk University; and McMaster University, and holds a diploma in Education Management from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education.