Roger Sharpe is a former state senator for six mountain counties in northwestern North Carolina. He has spent his life, after growing up on a tobacco farm in Sandy Springs, N.C., in pursuit of education for himself and for others. After his time as senator he worked with the U.S. Office for Civil Rights, taught at East Carolina University, and represented the interests of the National School Boards Association before Congress. After earning degrees from East Carolina University, The Kennedy School at Harvard and the Harvard Graduate School of Education, he later attended Union Theological Seminary for a masters in divinity.