Eugene F. Rivers III

Reverend Eugene F. Rivers III, a former Sommerville gang member from Philadelphia, was educated at Harvard where he studied philosophy and history of science. He was the subject of a Newsweek cover story in 1998 and was prominently featured in a second cover story on the AIDS crisis in Africa two years later. Gustav Niebuhr in the New York Times identified Reverend Rivers as the Bush administration’s point man on faith-based and community service. He is the founder and director of the Seymour Institute for Black Church and Policy Studies and is a widely published writer and community activist who has lectured internationally. He also advised both Bush Administrations and the Clinton Administration on their faith-based initiatives and in the foreign policy arena regarding the AIDS crisis in Africa. He has provided commentary for ABC (Prime Time, Nightline, and ABC Morning News), NBC (Hardball, Morning Joe and MSNBC), CBS (CBS Evening News, Sixty Minutes II), PBS (Charlie Rose, Bill Moyers Show) and Fox Television (The O’Reilley Factor). He lives and works among the poor in inner-city Boston with his wife, Dr. Jacqueline C. Rivers.