JOSEPH PATRICK KENNEDY, III

October 1, 1980

“My family has had the great privilege of serving Massachusetts before. They taught me that public service is an honor, given in trust, and that trust must be earned each and every day. That’s exactly what I intend to do.”

Joseph P. Kennedy III, born in October 1980 in Boston as the son of Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II and Sheila Rauch.  He’s the oldest grandson of former U.S Senator Robert F. Kennedy and great-nephew of the late president John F. Kennedy. He has a twin brother named Matthew Rauch Kennedy. 

Since February 2012 Joe Kennedy is running for Congress and the Massachusetts 4th Congressional District. Before running, he served as an Assistant District Attorney for Middlesex County, Massachusetts, prosecuting a wide variety of misdemeanors and felonies including assaults, domestic violence and drug offenses. Prior to joining the Middlesex County office he served the counties of Barnstable, Dukes and Nantucket as an Assistant District Attorney.

Joe graduated from Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, a student managed pro-bono law firm serving some of Boston’s most impoverished neighborhoods. Among other clients, he represented tenants who – despite paying their bills – were forced out of their homes by banks after they foreclosed on delinquent landlords.

In addition to his studies inside the classroom and legal aid work, Joe was technical editor of the Harvard Human Rights Journal and co-founded an empowerment program for at-risk youth in a Boston public school. He helped design and teach a curriculum in which students used photography to discuss the challenges of crime, drugs, and poverty facing their neighborhoods.

Joe served in the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic from 2004-2006. Assigned near Puerto Plata, Joe helped local residents establish control over the Río Damajagua waterfall national park and raised more than $100,000 in seed money to transform the tour guide community into a sustainable business. He put in place a governing structure that fairly compensated local guides for their work, allowed them control of the park, and—most uniquely—established a community fund that reinvested profits from the park into education, infrastructure, and recreation investments back into their community. As a result, the tour guides received higher wages, more jobs were created and the community fund has financed projects that have brought water to over one hundred homes, purchased a new school bus, constructed a basketball court, established a scholarship fund, and built a small police station.

Joe studied Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University, where he was the starting goalie and co-captain of the Men’s Lacrosse team. He speaks fluent Spanish.