Paul Perkins Ratliff ’88

Paul Perkins Ratliff died after a 13-month battle with brain cancer on December 22, 2021. He was 56 years old. He was born in El Paso, Texas, in 1964 to Jack and Clare Ratliff. He graduated from St. Stevens High School in Austin, Texas, and attended Wesleyan University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1988 with a double major in film and theater. 

Paul was multifaceted; he seemed to live many lives—he was an actor, a cabinetmaker, a writer, a therapist, an ethnographer, an adventurer, a storyteller, a humorist, a deeply observant and wise human. In his presence you felt truly seen, heard, understood—and funnier, smarter, and more interesting somehow. He approached life with a sense of play and humor that was steeped in his love of language—which sometimes took the form of haikus, limericks, an artful turn of phrase. These were experiments in expression, grounded in connections he had to the people in his life and his collection of experiences. 

He was a theater actor in Chicago for much of the ’90s. There he was a founding member of the Great Jones Theater Company. He performed at the Goodman Theatre, one of Chicago’s most preeminent theatres, as well as at smaller theatres all over Chicago. He earned praise from The Chicago Tribune and other Chicago theatre critics for his roles in American Divine, the collected short plays of Joe Pintauro (for which he garnered a Jeff nomination,) and Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day among others. 

He went on to work at a small start-up in Chicago called E-Lab, doing work that combined anthropology and product design to help companies think better about people’s experiences with their products. E-Lab was eventually purchased by Sapient, a multinational consultancy. With them Paul moved to London, where he lived for seven years. Across this time, he worked as a consultant for organizations like Ford, Unilever, Frito Lay, Steelcase, Johnson & Johnson, UPS, and BMW, and conducted research all over the world. 

He moved back to the U.S. in 2008 where he met and married his wife Maggie Siff.  They welcomed a daughter, Lucy Luna Ratliff, in 2014. During this time he turned his attention to a lifelong interest, psychotherapy. He returned to school and received his master’s from Pacifica Graduate Institute. At the time of his death, he was a licensed MFT in practice in Manhattan, New York. 

He is survived by his parents Jack and Clare Ratliff, his wife Maggie Siff, daughter Lucy Ratliff, and his brothers John and Ben Ratliff.  Not to mention friends all over the world, with and for whom he cultivated a lifelong practice of daily ordinary joy.