Friday Morning Man: Arne Duncan!

So, I was watching The Daily Show With Jon Stewart last night and one of his guests was U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

As I watched this tall, handsome and smart man talk about education, I decided he’d be a nice change-of-pace Morning Man for us.

Duncan is 47 and was previously CEO of Chicago Public Schools. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1987 where he was co-captain of the varsity basketball team. He then played professional basketball in Australia for four years.

He began his career in education in 1992 when he was appointed director of the Ariel Education Initiative, a program mentoring children at one of the Chicago’s worst-performing elementary schools and then assisting them as they proceeded further in the education system.

Duncan comes from a family of educators. His father was a psychology professor at the University of Chicago while his mother runs the Sue Duncan Children’s Center, an after-school program primarily serving African-American youth in the Kenwood neighborhood. While growing up, Duncan spent much of his free time at his mother’s center tutoring or playing with students there.