Turns out Austin King, the progressive activist who became Madison City Council president at age 24, was only getting started.

Now, at 28, after two years in New Orleans, he’s headed back to school, earning scholarships at New York University’s School of Law and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

In Madison, King often was at the center of action, fighting for social justice causes while a UW-Madison student. He was elected to the City Council in 2003 and led a successful bid to enact a city minimum wage and nearly won another effort to make employers provide sick leave. He was elected council president in 2006.

In August 2007, King moved to New Orleans to be with his girlfriend and soon became national director of nonprofit community organizer ACORN’s financial justice center.

At ACORN, he has served as a national spokesman, engaging commentators and reporters from Fox News, CNN, National Public Radio and even Al Jazeera English. He also saw a lot of the Barack Obama campaign, catching speeches in Iowa, attending the Democratic National Convention in Denver and scoring a spot backstage Obama’s election night victory speech at Grant Park in Chicago.

This summer, he’ll travel to Latin America and hike to the Incan city of Machu Picchu in Peru. He said he then hopes to earn his law and master’s degrees in four years.

"I’ve been bitten by the activist bug and haven’t really stopped," he said. "I want to acquire the skills I need to make an even bigger impact on the world."

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