Devin Blake Kilpatrick was born to April and the late Roosevelt Kilpatrick, Jr, in Rome, New York. He has two younger brothers, Brendan and Cameron, who are 23 and 21 at the time of this writing. Cameron was also named a Ron Brown Scholar in 2018.
After graduating as valedictorian from Rome Free Academy in 2015, Devin enrolled in Princeton University. While at Princeton, Devin became heavily involved as a student representative to administration. As a member of the University Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid, he advocated for rural and low-income students, ultimately helping to secure a “move-in allowance” for incoming first-year students. As a member of the CPUC Naming Committee, Devin lent his perspective to an effort to diversify the names of spaces and places on Princeton’s campus. During his tenure on the committee, the University named its admissions and financial aid building after Nobel Prize in Literature winner and former Princeton professor Toni Morisson. During his senior year, Devin served as part of a panel that selected Karen Richardson to be Princeton’s new Dean of Undergraduate Admissions. Devin developed a working proficiency in Spanish during his time at Princeton, which he used to conduct research in Guatemala and Mexico. His Senior Thesis, “Sojourners from Central America”, focused on the experiences of Guatemalan migrants and deportees as they travelled thousands of miles from their home country to the United States. Devin graduated from Princeton in 2019 with a degree in Sociology and Latin American Studies.
After finishing at Princeton, Devin enrolled in the Wake Forest University Master of Science in Management (MSM) program. While at Wake Forest, Devin served on the University’s Slavery, Race, and Memory Project – an institutional effort to reckon with Wake Forest’s complex historical relationship with slavery. After graduating in May 2020 during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, Devin immediately put his Management education to use as a Deputy Regional Team Manager for the New York State Contact Tracing Initiative. In his role as DRTM, Devin directs and oversees the COVID-19 Contact Tracing efforts for a region of 500,000 people spread across six counties. Devin also manages a team of School Specialists– subject-matter-experts who work closely with Local Health Departments and school districts to ensure that public health guidance is being correctly implemented. Once the pandemic subsides, Devin plans to apply to PhDs program in Organizational Behavior, where he hopes to conduct research on remote work and virtual teams.
