Georgia Persons is a professor in the School of Public Policy. She received a bachelor of arts Degree in political science from Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At MIT, her major professors included Walter Dean Burnham, Michael Lipsky, and the late Jeffrey Pressman. At the doctoral level she specialized in American Government and Politics, Urban Politics and Policy, and Political development. Her Ph.D. dissertation was titled: "Atlanta: Black Mayoral Leadership and the Dynamics of Political Change", which was an assessment of the first term of the mayoralty of Maynard Jackson, Atlanta's first black mayor.