Westley Watende Omari Moore (born October 15, 1978) is an American politician, businessman, author, and former U.S. Army officer, serving as the 63rd governor of Maryland since 2023.
Moore was born in Maryland and raised primarily in New York. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University and received a master's degree from Wolfson College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar. After several years in the U.S. Army and Army Reserve, he became an investment banker in New York. Between 2010 and 2015, Moore published five books, including a young-adult novel. He served as CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation from 2017 to 2021. Moore authored The Other Wes Moore and The Work. He also hosted Beyond Belief on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), and was executive producer and a writer for Coming Back with Wes Moore on PBS.
Moore is a member of the Democratic Party. He won the 2022 Maryland gubernatorial election, becoming Maryland's first black governor and the third black person elected governor of any U.S. state.
Early life and education Early life Moore was born on October 15, 1978, in Takoma Park, Maryland, a suburb of Washington D.C. His father, William Westley Moore Jr., was a broadcast news journalist, and his mother, Joy Thomas Moore, is a daughter of immigrants from Cuba and Jamaica, and a news media professional. His maternal grandfather, James Thomas, a Jamaican immigrant, was the first black minister in the history of the Dutch Reformed Church. His grandmother, Winell Thomas, a Cuban who moved to Jamaica before immigrating to the U.S., was a retired schoolteacher.
On April 15, 1982, when Moore was three years old, his father died of acute epiglottitis. In the summer of 1984, Moore's mother took him and his two sisters to live in the Bronx, New York, with her parents. His occasional babysitter was Kamala Harris's stepmother, Carol Kirlew. Moore attended Riverdale Country School. When his grades declined and he became involved in petty crime, his mother enrolled him in Valley Forge Military Academy and College. Moore's family moved back to Maryland after his mother's employer, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, relocated to Baltimore.
In 1998, Moore graduated Phi Theta Kappa from Valley Forge Military College with an associate degree. He then attended Johns Hopkins University, from which he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in international relations and economics in 2001. At Johns Hopkins, he also played wide receiver for the Johns Hopkins Blue Jays football team for two seasons, served as the chair of the university's Men of the NAACP branch, and was initiated into the Omicron Delta Kappa honor society, and Sigma Sigma chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha.
In 1998 and 1999, Moore interned for Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke. He later became involved with the March of Dimes before serving in the Army. He also interned at the United States Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Tom Ridge.
After graduating, he attended Wolfson College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, where he earned a master's degree in international relations in 2004 and submitted a thesis titled Rise and Ramifications of Radical Islam in the Western Hemisphere. While at Oxford, Moore shared a house with Luke Bronin.
Military service After graduating from Valley Forge, Moore completed the requirements for the United States Army's early commissioning program, and was appointed a second lieutenant of Military Intelligence in the Army Reserve. In January 2003, the Army ordered Moore to report to Fort Benning to complete infantry-officer basic training required for deployment to Afghanistan, during which he aggravated a knee injury suffered in college and could not finish the training. He arrived at Fort Leonard Wood in February 2005 to complete his training.
Moore served in the 82nd Airborne Division and was deployed to Afghanistan from 2005 to March 2006, starting as an information operations officer and later attaining the rank of captain. During his service, he was awarded the Afghanistan Campaign Medal, Armed Forces Reserve Medal with "M" devices, Army Service Ribbon, Bronze Star Medal, Combat Action Badge, National Defense Service Medal, and the Parachutist Badge. Moore left the Army in 2014.
Career
In February 2006, Moore was named a White House Fellow to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He later worked as an investment banker at Deutsche Bank in Manhattan and at Citibank from 2007 to 2012 while living in Jersey City, New Jersey. In 2009, Moore was included on Crain’s New York Business's "40 Under 40" list.
In 2010, Moore founded a television production company, Omari Productions, to create content for networks such as the Oprah Winfrey Network, PBS, HBO, and NBC. In May 2014, he produced a three-part PBS series, Coming Back with Wes Moore, which followed the lives and experiences of returning veterans.
In 2014, Moore founded BridgeEdU, a company that provided services to support students in their transition to college. Students participating in BridgeEdU paid $500 into the program with varying fees. BridgeEdU was not able to achieve financial stability and was acquired by student financial services company Edquity in 2019, mostly for its database of clients. A Baltimore Banner interview with former BridgeEdU students found that the short-lived company had mixed results.
In September 2016, Moore produced All the Difference, a PBS documentary that followed the lives of two young African-American men from the South Side of Chicago from high school through college and beyond. Later that month, he launched Future City, an interview-based talk show with Baltimore's WYPR station.
From June 2017 until May 2021, Moore was CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation, a charitable organization that attempts to alleviate problems caused by poverty in New York City. It works mainly through funding schools, food pantries and shelters. It also administers a disaster relief fund.CNBC profile , Robin Hood Foundation CEO Wes Moore: ‘Have faith, not fear. I feel that has guided me’, February 16, 2021 During his tenure as CEO, the organization also raised more than $650 million, including $230 million in 2020 to provide increased need for assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moore also sought to expand his advocacy to include America's poor and transform the organization into a national force in the poverty fight.
Prior to his election as governor, Moore was a member of the boards of directors for Under Armour and Green Thumb Industries. In October 2022, Moore announced that he would use a blind trust to hold his assets and resign from every board position if elected governor. In May 2023, Moore finalized his trust, making him the first governor to have one since Bob Ehrlich. In May 2025, after similar conflict of interest concerns were raised about former governor Larry Hogan during his 2024 U.S. Senate campaign, Moore signed into law a bill requiring future governors to put their assets into a blind trust or sign an agreement not to participate in decisions affecting their businesses.
Books On April 27, 2010, Spiegel & Grau published his first book, The Other Wes Moore. The 200-page book explores the lives of two young Baltimore boys who shared the same name and race, but largely different familial histories that leads them both down very different paths. In December 2012, Moore announced that The Other Wes Moore would be developed into a feature film, with Oprah Winfrey attached as an executive producer. In September 2013, Ember published his second book, Discovering Wes Moore. The book maintains the message and story set out in The Other Wes Moore, but is more accessible to young adults. In April 2021, Unanimous Media announced it would adapt The Other Wes Moore into a feature film. As of June 2022, a film has yet to be produced.
In January 2015, Moore wrote his third book, The Work. In November 2016, he wrote This Way Home, a young adult novel about Elijah, a high school basketball player, who emerges from a standoff with a local gang after they attempt to recruit him to their basketball team, and he refuses. In March 2020, Moore and former Baltimore Sun education reporter Erica L. Green wrote Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City, which explores the 2015 Baltimore protests from the perspectives of eight Baltimoreans who experienced it on the front lines.
Disputed biographical claims In April 2022, CNN accused Moore of embellishing his childhood and where he actually grew up. Shortly after the article was published, Moore created a website that attempted to rebut the allegations.
Lieutenant General Michael R. Fenzel recommended Moore for the Bronze Star in 2006. Moore applied to a White House fellowship that year. According to Moore and Frenzel, Fenzel encouraged Moore to say he'd received the Bronze Star in his fellowship application even though it was not yet awarded. Frenzel claimed that he assumed the medal would have been awarded by the time the fellows were named. By 2024, the Bronze Star had still not been awarded, when Fenzel resubmitted the paperwork for Moore to receive the Bronze Star Medal. On November 19, 2024, Moore was finally cited with a Bronze Star Medal for meritorious service in Afghanistan. Lieutenant General Fenzel pinned the decoration on Moore on December 14. Fenzel stated that Moore's medal was awarded 20 years late. Moore failed to correct journalists who referred to him as a Bronze Star recipient, and he apologized for the mistake.
In April 2026, Semafor and Politico reported that David D. Smith, the executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group and owner of The Baltimore Sun, was "deeply involved" with efforts to investigate Moore's military record, with The Sun having brought on a team of investigators from Fox 45 to comb through his military and collegiate athletic records. In June 2026, Moore's staff provided The Baltimore Banner with access to his military records and helped coordinate interviews with people who served with Moore or knew details of his deployment. In their review, The Banner found that Moore was a competent, well-respected soldier, but mischaracterized or inaccurately recounted details about his military record in his public statements and writings about his tenure. Moore acknowledged these mischaracterizations, but added that his errors should not be construed in a way that would undermine his military service.
Political career
Ideology During an August 2006 interview with C-SPAN, Moore said he identified as a "registered Democrat" who is "social moderate and strong fiscal conservative". In September 2022, he reiterated his position on fiscal issues as being "fiscally responsible". During his gubernatorial campaign, he was described as center-left as well as progressive. He has been described as a moderate during his tenure as governor.
Moore has cited Jared Polis, Parris Glendening, and Roy Cooper as his political role models.
Early political involvement Moore first expressed interest in politics in June 1996, telling a New York Times reporter that he planned to attend law school and enter politics after two years at Valley Forge. Moore first expressed interest in running for governor of Maryland during an interview with The Baltimore Sun in 2006, later telling The Baltimore Sun in October 2022 that he felt the idea of holding elected office only started to feel like a real possibility in 2020, when he was about to leave his job running Robin Hood.
Moore gave a speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, supporting Barack Obama for president. In 2013, he said that he had "no interest" in running for public office, instead focusing on his business and volunteer work. Later that year, Attorney General Doug Gansler said that he considered choosing Moore as his running mate in the 2014 Maryland gubernatorial election, in which he ran with state delegate Jolene Ivey.