About Roger

He was born in Harlem, New York in 1953. He attended Catholic and public schools through grade 8. He then attended St. Emma Military Academy. This school is now a part of the history stored at the Smithsonian Institute. He graduated after serving as the Battalion Executive Officer and Company Commander, demonstrating leadership skills very early in his life. He then went on to graduate from Morehouse College where he majored in Political Science. He was the first in his family to attend and finish college. As a student, not only did he succeed academically, but he also displayed great concern for his fellow students and the next generation of students. He was President of the Political Science Club and reinstituted the Frederick Douglass Tutorial Institute to help struggling high school students and to help prepare them for college. During college, he interned for former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson at the law firm of Jackson, Patterson, Parks and Franklin. He is married to Angela, an Educator, and has three children, Andrea, Brandon, and Ariel and four grandchildren.

Rep Roger Bruce represented District 61 in the Georgia House of Representatives. His district includes parts of South Fulton County, which includes parts of the new City of South Fulton, North Atlanta, Douglas County, and Cobb County. With the drawing of new maps following the last census the district will no longer include Cobb County and will take in more of Fulton and Douglas counties. He served as the first African American Chairman of the Douglas County Delegation for eight years.

He was first elected in 2002, began serving in January 2003, and has been re-elected every two years since then.  During his time in office, Rep. Bruce has focused on issues related to children with special needs, aging, education, working families, economic development, voting rights, and criminal justice. He has served on the Insurance, Education, Motor Vehicles, MARTOC, and Intergovernmental Coordination Committees.  He served on the robust Judiciary, Appropriation, Game Fish and Parks, Small Business and Job Development, and Human Relations and Aging Committees. In his role on the Appropriations Committee, he had a seat at the table in developing the state’s 64-billion-dollar budget. The budget includes money from state and federal funds.

Representative Bruce has served twice as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. This gave him the opportunity to vote for President Obama to be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. He is a post seat holder for the Democratic Party and, in his earlier days, served as the Vice President for the Young Democrats of Georgia.  He has been recognized for his work by many organizations, including A. Philip Randolph Elementary School, Herndon Elementary School, All Children Are Special, Another Way Out, Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, National Coalition of 100 Black Women, and the Georgia Council on Aging. The Atlanta Police Department recognized him for his efforts to protect the officers by organizing the community and business owners to raise money to purchase bulletproof vests.

His first major piece of legislation was to provide for a licensing process for developers in response to elderly constituents who were being taken advantage of by contractors.  He then sponsored the Time Out for Schools Legislation to protect parents who needed time off from work to address issues at their child’s school. After being asked to provide the same protection for parents that were providing assistance to their aging parents, the bill was amended and became known as the Parent Protection Act, receiving support from many groups, including the Georgia Federation of Teachers, Georgia  Council on Aging, AFL-CIO, PAGE, Georgia PTA, AARP and many more. He also sponsored a bill that was signed into law in June 2013 to prohibit internet companies from charging a fee to remove mugshots from their sites if you have been exonerated for the offense you were accused of.  He has also introduced legislation to assist minority and women entrepreneurs in accessing state contracts. His Bill HB 78 was used as the basis for a portion of the Governor’s legislative package on the topic of minority equity and fairness in state spending. Rep Bruce also sponsored HB 22 which allows citizens to vote at any precinct within their county versus going to a specified location to vote. His legislation, HB 514, allowed citizens of Unincorporated South Fulton County the opportunity to vote to establish their own city. Voters overwhelmingly chose to create what is now the City of South Fulton. A few years later he passed legislation that added 8 miles of Fulton Industrial Blvd to the new city adding 12 million in new annual revenue to the city. His work to get Douglas County the TAD legislation passed allowed them to fund numerous improvement projects throughout the county.

He has introduced legislation to create a department to look at the impact slavery is still having on descendants of that awful time in our history. Once that Information is gathered, recommendations will be made to provide reparations to those descendants. His campaign slogan, “Bruce Will Produce…Again” is most appropriate.

He currently serves on the Board of Trustees at The Interdenominational Theological Center, the Board of Directors for Fulton Atlanta Community Action Authority, Inc., and All Children Are Special. He is a member of the Leadership Atlanta Class of 1980 and the 2006 Class of the Flemming Leadership Institute.

Outside of his community and government responsibilities, Representative Bruce has had a distinguished career as a Human Resources Executive, serving as Vice-President of Human Resources for Burger King Corporation, American Hospital Supply, Nationwide Credit Corporation, and Atlanta Life Financial Group. In these roles, he was responsible for recruitment and retention, training and management development, legal compliance, benefits, and all other aspects of Human Resources.

He served as Chief Executive Officer for University Community Academy, a public charter school in the Atlanta Public School system. His role was to set policy for the school and to gather the resources needed to operate the school.

He was the founder of Saving Our Society Pretrial Intervention, LLC. The company works with first-time offenders and others who have minor infractions and assists them in getting back on track. Once they complete the program, they will be eligible to have their arrest record removed. While he has left SOS to pursue other interests, his impact on the lives of those who were kept out of the prison system because of his work, will last a lifetime.