Rob “Biko” Baker is one of those people who left Milwaukee to see the country but then felt compelled to return. He played soccer and coached through the Boys & Girls Clubs, getting a degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He left for California to go to grad school at UCLA, where he eventually earned a doctorate in history with a dissertation on the intersection between deindustrialization and the war on drugs in Milwaukee. Along the way he got involved in the music industry, working with Snoop Dogg and others. He was devastated when he learned on a visit home that four teens he’d mentored had been shot and killed, so he put grad school on hold and launched the Campaign Against Violence to reach out to inner-city youth, tapping into his hip-hop street cred. He then spent close to 10 years as the executive director of the League of Young Voters, which seeks to get young people involved in their communities using hip-hop and other means. Now he’s the founder of Render, which uses digital storytelling to help the public sector and social cause organizations. He also spent a year in Ferguson, Mo., after the death of Michael Brown, and has been working to elevate the Black Lives Matter message.