“The most powerful thing you can do for your community is go back to it, not to visit, but to stay and build something worth fighting for.”
A Neighborhood That Shaped a Leader the World Would Come to Know
Adrian Perkins grew up in the Cedar Grove neighborhood of Shreveport, Louisiana, a community that shaped him in ways he would spend the rest of his life honoring. As a boy, he sometimes slept under his bed because of drive-by shootings outside. His mother worked forty years for the local electric company. His brother Jeff joined the Army first, and that decision planted something in Adrian that never left.
When the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001, Adrian was a junior in high school. He had already been watching his brother serve. Now he made his decision. He sought and received a nomination to the United States Military Academy at West Point.
He arrived at West Point as a young man from Shreveport. He left as the first African American cadet ever elected class president in the institution’s 215-year history.
Three Tours. One Bronze Star. One Question.
After graduating from West Point, Adrian was commissioned as a field artillery officer in 2008, posted first at Fort Stewart, Georgia, and later at Fort Sill, Fort Benning, and Fort Campbell. He deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan across three combat tours, eight years of service in total. He achieved the rank of Captain and Company Commander, completed Ranger training, and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for his service.
He came home carrying the discipline, the perspective, and the hard-earned clarity of someone who had been tested thoroughly and had not been found wanting. He also came home carrying a question that had never fully left him since the day he drove away from Cedar Grove:
What would it actually take to change things for the people back home?
He had seen what was possible at the highest levels of leadership. He had also seen, on the streets of Iraq and Afghanistan, what failure of governance actually costs people. And he had never forgotten the neighborhood he came from.
He decided the answer required a law degree.
Harvard, and Everything It Was Building Toward
Following his honorable service and three combat tours, Adrian brought everything the Army had shaped in him to the next chapter, earning his place at Harvard Law School, where he was elected student body president and named a 2015 Tillman Scholar. He arrived as a veteran and left as a lawyer, with a degree from one of the country’s most prestigious institutions and every door in the world open to him.
One of those doors led to a top law firm. He chose a different one entirely. The pull of Shreveport, the neighborhood that raised him, the community that needed him, was stronger than any offer a firm could make. He went home.
He Could Have Gone Anywhere. He chose Shreveport.
In December 2018, Adrian was elected the 56th Mayor of Shreveport at thirty-three, the second youngest in the city’s history. His term was tested almost immediately by the COVID-19 pandemic, but he led with distinction, becoming the first mayor to publicly identify COVID’s disproportionate impact on minority communities, a response highlighted by the Washington Post. He cut crime to its lowest point since 1975, transformed a $1.2 million deficit into a $55 million surplus, and appointed the city’s first Chief Technology Officer. From his office window, he could see his mother’s workplace across the street. She had always believed he would end up right here.
After leaving the Mayor’s Office in 2022, he became a fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics and Stanford’s Hoover Institution. He now serves as Senior Vice President at Prospect Park in Chicago, continuing to serve on the boards of Service 2 School, the US Mayoral Roundtable, and the Harvard Law School Visiting Committee.
The mission has never changed. Only the address has.
What Adrian’s Story Leaves Us With
Adrian Perkins slept under his bed as a boy to stay safe. He walked onto the West Point campus and made history. He earned a Bronze Star in combat. He walked away from a law firm to go home and govern the community that raised him.
Every chapter of his life has been a form of going back. Back to his roots. Back to his people. Back to the belief that the places that need the most from their leaders deserve the best of them.
He has always been willing to be that person. He still is.
