Rob Lalka is originally from Roanoke, Virginia, where he was raised in Covenant Presbyterian Church.  After graduating with honors from Yale University, Rob worked for Wachovia Bank in Atlanta, Georgia, and then as a post-Katrina AmeriCorps volunteer in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana.  Rob holds his Master of Public Policy from Duke University's Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, where his involvement in the Gulf Coast recovery effort continued through the policy consulting work of the Duke-New Orleans Post-Katrina Partnership.

In addition to his articles on Faithful Democrats, Rob's writings have appeared in policy, legal, and historical journals, including Global Infrastructure, PolicyMatters, The Current, and The Southern Historian.  For his essay "I'll Live And Die For Dixie: The Rhetoric of the Southern Manifesto" from 2007, Rob received the University of Alabama Summersell Prize; and in 2008, he was a Southern Growth Policies Board Research Fellow.