Ricardo Rowe is a Jamaican born Author and Community Leader.  Ricardo migrated to the United States with his mother in the early 1980s, where he resided first in Baltimore City, Maryland.  Soon thereafter, Ricardo’s father also migrated to the United States and the family eventually relocated to the suburbs of Columbia, Maryland, where Ricardo spent the remainder of his childhood.

It was his upbringing in Columbia, Maryland, a planned community, that Ricardo credits with first recognizing the positive impacts of diversity.  It was also here that he found his passion for playing football, which earned him multiple honors, including Player of the Year and ultimately a full scholarship to Penn State University where he played under the leadership of the legendary Joe Paterno for two years before transferring to the University of Pittsburgh where he played for the equally legendary Johnny Majors. 

It is Ricardo’s mission to demonstrate how this is possible by sharing his own experience as a byproduct of a planned community, his firsthand account of growing up in a diversified America.