Robert L. Harris is a retired Vice President of Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E). A native of Arkadelphia, Arkansas, where he attended segregated schools, he migrated to Oakland, CA in 1960 and graduated from Oakland Technical High School in 1961. A 1963 graduate of Merritt College and a 1965 graduate of San Francisco State University, he was inducted into S.F. State University’s Hall of Fame in 2007.  In 1972, he received his Juris Doctor degree from the University Of California School Of Law at Berkeley (Boalt Hall) where he was an associate editor of the California Law Review. Admitted to the California State Bar on December 13, 1972, he was a state bar examination grader from 1973-79.

 

Shortly after graduating from law school, he joined the legal staff of PG&E and practiced law there for seventeen (17) years, handling a variety of legal matters before transitioning to the business side of the company in 1989.  In 1985, he became the first and only lawyer in PG&E’s history to argue and win a case for it in the United States Supreme Court.  In so doing, he became the first lawyer in the nation to convince the Supreme Court that a corporation, like an individual, has negative First Amendment rights. After completing the Advanced Management Program (AMP 103) at the Harvard Business School (1988), he became Division Manager of one of PG&E’s major operating divisions.  In 1994 he was elected Vice President of Community & Local Governmental Relations.  And, in 1998, he was elected Vice President of Environmental Affairs (the first ever environmental officer for PG&E), and retired on January 1, 2007, after 34 years of service. In 2022, PG&E named its Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Award in his honor.

 

A former president of the Charles Houston Bar Association (also a member of its Hall of Fame), he served in 1979-1980 as President of the National Bar Association (NBA), the first ever from the West Coast. As President of the NBA, he convened the first National Conference on Black on Black Crime in 1980.  One of the founders of the California Association of Black Lawyers (CABL) in 1977, he presided at its first meeting; has received its highest honor (the Loren Miller Award) and its Life Time Achievement Award. Moreover, he drafted California Code of Civil Procedure 527.7 on behalf of CABL.  Selected in 2007 as a member of the HistoryMakers, Harris was inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame in 2013 and into the CABL Hall of Fame in 2016.

 

He is the 27th Grand Polemarch (national president) of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity (1991-1995) and the 43rd Grand Sire Archon (National President; 2008-2010) of Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity (the Boulé). He has received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Charles Houston Bar Association; the Gertrude E. Rush Award of the NBA (2011), the 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award of the 100 Black Men of the Bay Area, and the 2016 Civic Award of the Oral Lee Brown Foundation.

 

As a civil rights activist, he received the NAACP’s highest legal honor, the “William Robert Ming Award” (1986). He has received the NBA’s highest honor, the “C. Francis Stradford Award” (1982) and the American Bar Association’s highest Pro Bono Service Award (1986).   Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, in 2005, bestowed upon him its highest honor, the “Laurel Wreath.” 

 

A commissioner for the Port of Oakland from 1996 to 2000, he was the first General Counsel of the American Association of Blacks in Energy. He is a former board member of the U. S. EPA’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, the Congressional Black Caucus’ National Energy Policy Commission, and is a former member of the Board of Directors of the California League of Conservation Voters.  He is the current Chair of U. S. Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s Finance Committee.  On six (6) different occasions (1980, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995 and 2009) he was selected by Ebony Magazine as one of the “100 Most Influential Blacks in America.”  Harris is the author of the recently published book, “Goodbye, Arkadelphia! Turning Obstacles into Opportunities;” and is the host of “All About Community” on Comcast cable OURTV78. 

 

He is married to Glenda Newell-Harris, M.D. and is the father of four children and the grandfather of six.