Dr. Max Hunter is a 2002 graduate of the University of Washington of Seattle, Washington.
Dr. Max Hunter entered the world with the culmination of civil rights activism and Senator Patrick Moynihan’s report on The Negro Family. Max spent his formative years bearing witness to urban decline in Southern California and Washington D.C. A socially-aware child, he dreamed of shedding illiteracy to pursue erudition based on the black consciousness he encountered while experiencing diverse class and cultural experiences in Los Angeles and Southeast San Diego (El Barrio Logan Heights and Lincoln Park). Although Max struggled to reconcile his academic pursuits and street culture, He eventually earned his Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and master’s degree in Bioethics from the University of Washington. In addition, he earned two master’s degrees in History of Science and Education from Harvard University. He has served as a Diversity Affairs Liaison to the Association of American Medical College. While working in higher education, Hunter developed a cutting-edge premedical program focused on health disparities and the social determinants of health. Dr. Hunter seeks not only to understand health disparities but the roots and perpetuation of literacy ambivalence among black men.
During the pandemic, Dr. Hunter revised his award-winning dissertation focusing on black males experiencing ambivalence regarding identity, black authenticity, literacy, and masculinity: Reading While black. He also founded Stories and Theories: A Narrative-based Approach to Consulting and Life-Coaching. As the storyteller-in-chief, his goal is to facilitate personal and professional transformation—whole-person changes—through engagement with critical theory, literacy analysis, autobiography, and memoir. Dr. Hunter’s interest connected to his own biography, being born into a family with black male elders who were felons and did time in California prisons. As a shoe-shine boy in middle school, he began to forge an identity as a preppy hustler, presaging the character Stringer Bell on The Wire. As the current Program Coordinator in the Community Innovation Hub at Odessa Brown Community Clinics, Max hopes to leverage his education, experiences, and social capital to serve the most marginalized communities based on first-hand knowledge of crime, illiteracy, poverty, and violence.
A renowned omnivore and a notorious soccer dad, Max enjoys cooking, dining out, listening to music with his boys in their convertible VW, and people-watching while strolling Alki Beach with his family in West Seattle, WA.