• Current Scholars
• Alumni
• Dream Big
• Scholar Travels
• Scholar Art & Music
• Scholar Stories
• The Scholar Experience

John Kimble

Biography

John Kimble wrote a senior thesis that won a Princeton prize and the National Best Undergraduate Thesis Prize from the Law & Society Association, and was subsequently published in the Law & Social Inquiry Journal. He graduated cum laude in 2003 and his options were open. He chose to put law school on hold, and enter the world of nonprofit social policy. John moved to California, where he worked with One Economy Corporation to bring municipal wireless internet access to low-income residents of San Francisco, and coordinated the City of Oakland's anti-predatory mortgage lending coalition as a Compton Mentor Fellow.

Although John's mother never finished college, she set an example of service, founding an award-winning nonprofit to advocate for children in the family court system. By high school, John began studying potential solutions to urban poverty, including community loan funds and urban land trusts. In college, he interned with community development corporations and urban policy groups.

Hurricane Katrina changed John's course. John had returned to his hometown of New Orleans to celebrate his mother's purchase of a house. The real estate closing was scheduled for the day the hurricane hit; the home was destroyed. The disaster brought John back to live in New Orleans, where he became the New Orleans public policy director for the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations and volunteered to clean flooded schools. His scholarship to law school now clears the path for John to enter the field of community development finance. "I am haunted by images of the streets of my childhood submerged under water. I am hungry to learn from this past and gain the skills I need to create a better future for myself, my family, my community, and my world."

Other Scholars Like John