Westley Watende Omari Moore (born October 15, 1978) is a politician, investment banker, novelist, television producer, and nonprofit leader who has served as Maryland’s 63rd governor since 2023. He is the first Black governor of the state, the third Black person elected as governor of any U.S. state, and the only incumbent black governor of any U.S. state as of 2023. Moore is the sixth African American state governor in the United States, following P. Louisiana’s B. S. Pinchback, Virginia’s Douglas Wilder, Massachusetts’ Deval Patrick, and New York’s David Paterson.
Moore, who was born in Maryland and reared mostly in New York, graduated from Johns Hopkins University and earned a master’s degree as a Rhodes Scholar at Wolfson College, Oxford. After spending several years in the U.S. Moore worked as an investment banker in New York after serving in the Army and Army Reserve. Moore released five novels between 2010 and 2015, including a young adult fiction. From 2017 until 2021, he was the CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation. Moore is the author of The Work and The Other Wes Moore. He also hosted Beyond Belief on the Oprah Winfrey Network and was an executive producer and writer for PBS’s Coming Back with Wes Moore.
