Rafe Judkins
Official Web Site: www.rafejudkins.com

Rafe was born in Salt Lake City where he grew up with a huge Mormon extended family. He moved to Pittsburgh when he was five, but continued as a practicing member of the church. He actually went to seminary at 5:30 every morning before going to high school! Even at this young age, Rafe was passionate about traveling and meeting people from different backgrounds and cultures. He worked as a teacher for inner city middle school students, traveled to all 50 states, and organized Paidea, an annual day-long event where classes were eschewed for discussion, lectures and multimedia presentations about a topic of national importance (racism, abortion, the death penalty etc.). As his world view grew broader, he started to question some of the Mormon church’s policies, and left the church his senior year.

Rafe’s conflicts with his Mormon faith compounded when he came out of the closet his first year at Brown University. He became active in the Queer Alliance on campus, serving as a leader in 2002. He focused his efforts on broadening events to include straight allies, religious organizations, fraternities and other groups that usually conflict with gay and lesbian groups on campus. Rafe also stepped up as an educator by managing the Brown Outdoor Leadership Training program. He spoke on campus and lead programs centered on diversity, leadership, and communication for both students and staff. He even organized a semester-long training for future campus leaders his senior year, teaching 42 sophomores how to teach others about diverse topics.

Rafe majored in biology and anthropology at Brown, focusing his studies on sexual orientation across time and cultures. And it was through this exploration of others that he came to better understand himself and his relationship with his own religion. On SURVIVOR, this allowed Rafe to befriend and ally himself with people from incredibly diverse backgrounds. He was really the first gay man on the show to appeal to Americans across the board; as popular in the red states as the blue!

Rafe is excited to share his wealth of knowledge on diversity, both academic and personal, with colleges, professional organizations, and various other groups across the country! He is passionate about the promotion of understanding and tolerance on a national and individual level.

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Rafe Judkins was welcomed into the world by a huge Mormon family including more than 60 first cousins. Rafe’s mother, Lani, was an artist and his father, Ren, an inventor, so Rafe had a rather unique childhood spent painting rocks and taking apart machines. At age five, he moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he attended Sewickley Academy for fourteen years. Rafe spent his summers there teaching English and Science to inner city middle school students with the Summerbridge program. He was so successful that he was promoted to Head of the Science Department his second year, overseeing one-quarter of the staff. He was the youngest person ever selected as a Department Head. Rafe was also active in the theatre, performing in more than a dozen plays, one of which was listed as a “Top 10 Play” (professional or otherwise) in Pittsburgh in 1999. He received Best Actor honors in 2001. He was also active in the organization of Paeidea, a day each year where classes were cancelled and students spoke about and discussed a topic of national importance (abortion, racism, the death penalty, etc.). Rafe showed a strong aptitude for math, placing first in a state-wide competition that allowed him to meet the governor of Pennsylvania. He graduated Cum Laude in 2001with awards for French, math, biology, drama, and vocal performance.

Rafe then moved to Providence, Rhode Island to attend Brown University where he concentrated in Biology and Anthropology. While in college, he managed Brown Outdoor Leadership Training (BOLT), a program designed to give students exposure to intense wilderness situations with small groups of people. He spoke at many campus events and organized and lead trainings for students and staff on leadership, diversity, communication, group facilitation and many other topics. Rafe also wrote, performed, directed and produced for the sketch comedy group Out of Bounds throughout his career at Brown. When he joined the group as a freshman, few people knew about it or came to the shows, and when he left as a senior it was the #1 comedy group on campus and they performed at comedy events across the Northeast. In his senior year, Rafe founded and lead a program at Brown that allowed students to cook a meal themselves on Sunday afternoons under the watch of the head catering chef. The program was wildly successful, expanded throughout the year, and is now an institution at the university. Rafe was also active with the Queer Alliance at Brown, serving as a leader for the group in 2002. He focused his efforts on broadening events to include straight allies, religious organizations, fraternities and other groups that are often in conflict with gay and lesbian organizations on campus.

For Booking Information Contact:
VANBROS and Associates Inc.
7121 West 79th Street • Overland Park, KS 66204
913.381.7121 • fax: 913.381.7120

Photo Credit: Will Patterson