<Begin Segment 1>

EK: Emi Kuboyama from Stanford University here with Bob Bratt in San Francisco. It is August 19, 2019. Hi, Bob, could you start by stating your name and your ORA role or title?

BB: Bob Bratt. I was the head of the Office of Redress Administration as well as the executive director for the Civil Rights Division.

EK: And could you tell us a little bit about where you were born and raised, and your educational background?

BB: I didn't go far in life. I was born and raised in Bethesda, Maryland, right outside D.C., still live there. I actually live, just moved back to blocks within my childhood home. I went to a local school and local college there, Towson University, which was the number two largest university in the state of Maryland, and a BS degree in management and finance.

EK: Could you tell us about your professional experience prior to starting with the Office of Redress Administration?

BB: So when I was in college, there was a co-op program, so I started working for the government when I was nineteen years old. And then ended up at the Social Security Administration. They ended up paying for my education from junior year on. So I started as a GS-3, which is lower than hardly anybody starts, and worked my way up through the finance staff and through the budget staff. And when I was thirty and a half years old, I was fortunate enough to be in a position to be brought in the SES ranks at the Civil Rights Division as the Executive Officer, executive director there, which is a senior non-lawyer. So quite shockingly, the average SES is forty-seven years old, according to the Office of Personnel Management, so I was a very young Senior Executive in Civil Rights way back then.

EK: Wow, that's pretty impressive.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2019 Emi Kuboyama. All Rights Reserved.