Honorary Co-Chair

JUDGE GREG MATHIS

Judge Greg Mathis Show

Judge Greg Mathis is a national figure known for his advocacy campaigns for urban youth, and equal justice. He is the longest-running African-American male host on television, with the show now in its 22nd season. His inspirational life story of a street youth who rose from jail to Judge has provided hope to millions who watch him on the Emmy® Award-winning television court show Judge Mathis each day. In 2022, Judge Mathis was awarded a star on Hollywood’s “Walk of Fame,” an honor bestowed on luminaries of the entertainment industry.

Judge Mathis’s public service career began in college where he led Free South Africa and voter registration campaigns on campus, while also working nights at McDonalds as a swing manager. After graduating from college in 1983, he joined the staff of Detroit City councilman Clyde Cleveland and continued to work as an advocate for equal justice with Reverend Jesse Jackson’s PUSH Excel, where he currently serves as Chairman. Judge Mathis has also served as a national board member of the NAACP and the Morehouse School of Medicine.

In his efforts to reach out to youth and ex-offenders both in and outside of the courtroom, Judge Mathis opened the Mathis Community Center in his hometown of Detroit in 2001 and has assisted thousands of youth with his non-profit agency Young Adults Asserting Themselves (Y.A.A.T.). It is an agency that provides career, business start-up and job opportunities, as well as job training, college enrollment assistance and mentorship of Detroit youth. In honor of his years of work and commitment to his hometown of Detroit, the city named one of the streets, Mathis Avenue, after him. The street is part of a new housing development, which replaced the housing projects he grew up in. Judge Mathis and his wife have also opened five non-profit preschools in the inner city of Detroit, and they have raised over $5 million for a variety of equal justice political and youth causes. He has received numerous awards including several Keys to Cities, honorary doctorates from Florida A&M, and Eastern Michigan University.

Mathis is dedicated to offering youth second chances and spreads his message of youth empowerment and equal justice as he travels to speak to audiences all across the country. His national education and youth crusades have attracted tens of thousands of parents and students throughout America. Judge Mathis continues to strengthen his legacy and give back to the community by being a mentor to several children at his local community center. Even some of the individuals who he put into prison went on to be litigants on his show, one of which went on to become a lawyer!

Judge Mathis is married to his wife Linda of 30 years and has 4 successful children and 1 adorable grandchild.