Marc H. Morial

Marc Morial is the President and CEO of the National Urban League, the nation’s largest historic civil rights and urban advocacy organization. He is one of the few national leaders to combine “street smarts” with “boardroom savvy.”

Morial served as Mayor of New Orleans and as President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Before that, he was a Louisiana State Senator and a lawyer with an active, high-profile practice in New Orleans. Today he is a leading national voice in the fight for jobs, education, housing, health, voting rights, equity, and entrepreneurship.

He is the author of the widely acclaimed leadership book The Gumbo Coalition: 10 Leadership Lessons That Help You Inspire, Unite, and Achieve, and his column, To Be Equal, reaches hundreds of thousands of readers. He also hosts the weekly syndicated television show America’s Black Forum.

Morial holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and African American studies from the University of Pennsylvania and a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center. Ebony named him one of the 100 most influential Black Americans, and The NonProfit Times named him one of its top 50 nonprofit leaders. He has also been recognized as one of the 100 most influential Black lawyers in America and inducted into the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame in Atlanta.

Morial and his late father, Ernest “Dutch” Morial, made history as the first African American father and son to both serve as mayors in the U.S. Their story was the subject of a Double Jeopardy question on Jeopardy! in the 1990s.