The Honorable Romano L. Mazzoli was born in Louisville, KY, and is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, BS, Magna Cum Laude, 1954, of the University of Louisville Law School, JD, 1960, graduating first in his class, and of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, MPA, 2004.

Mazzoli’s public service includes two years of active duty in the U.S. Army, 1954-1956, election to the Kentucky State Senate where he served from 1968 to 1970, and election to the United States House of Representatives in Washington where he represented Kentucky’s Third Congressional District from 1971 to his retirement in 1995.

While in Congress, Mazzoli served on the House Judiciary Committee on which he chaired the Immigration, International Law and Refugees Subcommittee and wrote the landmark 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill) incollaboration with Senator Alan Simpson. He also served onthe House Small Business and the House Intelligence Committees in his career.

Mazzoli is a member of the Kentucky and the Louisville bar associations. He currently serves on the Board of Overseers of the University of Louisville, on the Board of Directors of Father Maloney’s Boys Haven and on the Kentucky Legislative Ethics Commission. Mazzoli has received Honorary Doctorate degrees from the University of Notre Dame, Spalding University, Sullivan University, Centre College and Bellarmine University.

Mazzoli was a Visiting Professor at the University of Louisville’s Brandeis School of Law in 1995 and Distinguished Fellow in Law and Public Policy at the University of Louisville from 1998 to 2002. In 2003, after serving as Fellow of the Institute of Politics of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Mazzoli enrolled in the Master of Public Administration program at the Kennedy School, the oldest person ever accepted into the program.