Kenzie Bok

Bok was born in Boston on June 30, 1989[4] and grew up in the Bay Village neighborhood.[5] Before her admission to Harvard in 2007, she had been educated at the John Winthrop School in Boston, the Park School, and Milton Academy (2007).[6]

Bok served as student president of the Kennedy Institute of Politics while she was a Harvard undergraduate,[7][8] where in 2011 she earned her B.A. summa cum laude in intellectual history.[9] In 2010, she was awarded a Marshall Scholarship,[10] then continued studies at the University of Cambridge (St John's College), where she earned her M.Phil. in Political Thought & Intellectual History in 2012 and then her Ph.D. in History in 2016.[3] While at Cambridge, she was awarded for her academic work the St John's Benefactors Scholarship, the Quentin Skinner Prize, the Sara Norton Prize, and the Thirwall Medal and Prince Consort Prize.[11]

Bok is an intellectual historian who specializes in the young John Rawls and his path to writing A Theory of Justice. As a Harvard University lecturer on social policy and intellectual history, she also teaches a course on "Justice in Housing." She has published peer-reviewed articles on the philosopher John Rawls in Modern Intellectual History and the Journal of the History of Ideas.[12]

Bok interned for the Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign at its Chicago headquarters, then, following the election, was an intern in 2010 at the White House.[7] She later served as Budget Director for Boston City Councilor-at-Large Annissa Essabi-George, and Senior Advisor for Policy and Planning for the Boston Housing Authority, the city agency focused on the management, preservation, and creation of low-income housing.[13]

Bok is a longtime member and vestry member at Trinity Church in Boston's Copley Square.[20]