Joe Hunter Jr., Chair, Co-Founder

Joe was born and raised in Seattle’s Central Area and currently lives in the Beacon Hill area, which ranks 18th of 14844 communities in the country based on its racial diversity.

In 1968, Joe and ten of his classmates were asked by a counselor to attend Roosevelt High School as part of Seattle’s voluntary transfer program. His attendance at RHS was meaningful and helped in his early development in learning how to navigate America’s racial culture.

RARE has given Joe an opportunity to collaborate with his high school classmates to change the racial climate at RHS and hopefully to make meaningful change toward racial equity.

Joe has a BA from WWSU in Business Administration and has held several executive level management positions in Merchandising, Operations and Human Resources. In the past, he has served on the boards of the Orange County, CA Urban League and the University of Illinois School of Business. Early in his career, he was instrumental in establishing a Minority Networking Conference in the western part of the country for his former company.

In his retirement and before the Coronavirus, he was a volunteer basketball coach at Seattle’s High Point Park Dept.