Thomas Perez

Thomas Edward Perez was born and raised in Buffalo, New York, to parents Grace (née Altagracia Brache Bernard) and Dr. Rafael Antonio de Jesús Pérez Lara, who had immigrated from the Dominican Republic.

His father, who earned American citizenship after enlisting in the United States Army after World War II, worked as a doctor in Atlanta, Georgia, before moving to Buffalo, where he worked as a physician at a Veterans Affairs hospital.

His mother, Grace, came to the United States in 1930 after her father, Rafael Brache, was appointed as the Dominican Republic's Ambassador to the United States. Brache was initially an ally of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, but after disagreements with the regime, he was declared an enemy of the state, forcing him and his family to remain in the United States.

Perez is the youngest of five brothers and sisters, all of whom but Perez followed their father in becoming physicians. His father died of a heart attack when Perez was 12 years old. He attended Christ the King in Amherst, New York until the 8th Grade. Perez graduated from Canisius High School, an all boys Jesuit school in Buffalo, in 1979.

Perez received his Bachelor of Arts in international relations and political science from Brown University in 1983. He joined the Sigma Chi fraternity there. He covered the cost of attending Brown with scholarships and Pell Grants and by working as a trash collector and in a warehouse. He worked in Brown's dining hall and for the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights.

In 1987, Perez received a Juris Doctor cum laude from Harvard Law School and a Master of Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

In 1986, while a student at Harvard, Perez worked as a law clerk for Attorney General Edwin Meese.

After graduating from Harvard, Perez worked as a law clerk for Judge Zita Weinshienk of the United States District Court for the District of Colorado from 1987 to 1989.

From 1989 to 1995, he worked as a federal prosecutor in the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. He later served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights under Attorney General Janet Reno. Perez chaired the interagency Worker Exploitation Task Force, which oversaw a variety of initiatives designed to protect workers.

From 1995 to 1998, Perez worked as Democratic Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy's principal adviser on civil rights, criminal justice, and constitutional issues. During the final two years of the second Clinton administration, he worked as the director of the Office for Civil Rights at the United States Department of Health and Human Services.

From 2001 to 2007, Perez was a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, where he taught in the clinical law and the law and health program. He was a part-time member of the faculty at the George Washington University School of Public Health.

Perez owns a home in Takoma Park, Maryland, with his wife, Ann Marie Staudenmaier, an attorney with the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, and their three children.

Perez is Catholic, and recalls that his parents told him, "In order to get to heaven, you have to have letters of reference from poor people."