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Kathleen Kennedy Townsend鈥檚 faith was shaped as she grew up in a large Irish Catholic family and attended Catholic schools. The eldest child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, she saw her parents make the connection between faith and justice, between faith and the common good.聽 Civil rights was a moral issue - poverty unacceptable. Her father鈥檚 article 鈥淪uppose God is Black?鈥� highlighted for her the notion that our religious beliefs were intimately connected to our public actions.

In the early eighties, Townsend wrote a number of articles connecting faith to the fight for a fairer society.聽 She founded the Maryland Student Service Alliance to make Maryland the first, and still only state that requires young people to engage in community service as a condition of graduation.聽 And, as Maryland鈥檚 first woman Lt. Governor, she instituted the office of Character Education - to provide a focal point for the teaching of responsibility and respect to the next generation.聽

Townsend serves on a number of non-profit boards.聽 She is the chairman of the Institute for Human Virology at the University of Maryland and serves on the board of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the Points of Light Foundation, National Catholic Reporter, and the Character Education Partnership, among others.聽 While serving as the chairman of the board of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, she created the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award.聽 Townsend is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Before being elected Lt. Governor, Townsend served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States. She helped design and launch the nationally acclaimed Police Corps, a program that gives college scholarships to young people who pledge to work as police officers for four years after graduating

Townsend has been appointed an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University鈥檚 School of Public Policy and has been a Visiting Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government where she focused her efforts on faith and public life.聽 Townsend is an honors graduate of Harvard University, and holds a law degree from the University of New Mexico where she was a member of the law review. She has received ten honorary degrees and has published several articles in聽The New York Times,听The Washington Post, and聽Washington Monthly, among others. She has recently published a book entitled聽Failing America's Faithful: How Today's Churches are Mixing God with Politics and Losing Their Way聽(Grand Central Publishing, 2007).

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend lives outside Baltimore, Maryland with her husband, David, a professor at St. John鈥檚 College in Annapolis. They have four daughters Meaghan, Maeve, Kate and Kerry.