Meena Harris | |
---|---|
Born | Meenakshi Ashley Harris October 20, 1984 Oakland, California, U.S. |
Education | Stanford University (BA) Harvard University (JD) |
Political party | Democratic |
Spouse | Nikolas Ajagu (m. 2014) |
Children | 2 |
Parents |
|
Relatives | Harris family |
MeenakshiAshley Harris (born October 20, 1984) is an American lawyer, children's book author, producer, and founder of the Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign, which creates statement fashion to support charity. [3] In June 2020, Harris released her first book from HarperCollins, entitled Kamala and Maya's Big Idea , which is based on the story of her mother, Maya Harris, and aunt, Kamala Harris, the 49th Vice President of the United States. [4]
Harris was born on October 20, 1984. [5] [6] Her mother, Maya Harris, is a lawyer and policy expert. Her aunt, Kamala Harris, is the Vice President of the United States. Her grandmother, Shyamala Gopalan, was an Indian-American cancer researcher and civil rights activist, and her grandfather, Donald Harris, is a Jamaican-American professor of economics at Stanford and a civil rights activist. [7]
Harris received her bachelor's degree from Stanford University in 2006, and her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 2012. [8] She graduated from Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland.
She founded "Phenomenal" in 2017, naming her fashion company for a 1978 Maya Angelou poem. [9] It then branched out to include the Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign, founded in 2017 as an organization that brings awareness to social causes. [3] The campaign covers a range of policy issues, including educational excellence and healthcare equity, criminal justice reform, gender parity in STEM, reproductive health, and political representation. [10] Ambassadors for the campaign include Serena Williams, Jessica Alba, Mark Ruffalo, Tracee Ellis Ross, Viola Davis, Yara Shahidi, Janelle Monae, Sarah Silverman, Debbie Allen, Rosario Dawson, Van Jones, Lizzo, Cecile Richards, and more. In September 2018, Harris also coordinated a full-page ad in The New York Times with Alicia Garza, founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network, to demonstrate national support for Christine Blasey Ford and survivors of sexual assault. [11] Harris also operates Phenomenal Media for written content and Phenomenal Productions for videos and visual content. [12] In December 2020, it was announced that she and Brad Jenkins would launch a production studio called Phenomenal Productions. [13]
In 2020, Harris released her first children's book from HarperCollins entitled Kamala and Maya's Big Idea, which is based on the real story of her mother, Maya Harris, and aunt Kamala Harris. [4] On January 19, 2021, she released her second children's book, Ambitious Girl. [14]
During Kamala Harris's successful 2016 campaign for the U.S. Senate, Harris served as a senior advisor on policy and communications. From 2016 to 2017, Harris served as a commissioner on the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women. [15]
Previously, Harris also served as Head of Strategy & Leadership at Uber where her stepfather Tony West is Chief Legal Officer, [16] and worked for international law firm Covington & Burling, Slack Technologies, and Facebook.
Harris married Nikolas Ajagu in 2014. The couple have two daughters. [17] [18]
Maya Rudolph is an American actress and comedian. Born in Gainesville, Florida, and raised in Los Angeles, she is the daughter of singer Minnie Riperton and composer Richard Rudolph. In 2000, Rudolph became a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL). During her tenure on the show, she played supporting roles in the films 50 First Dates (2004), A Prairie Home Companion (2006), and Idiocracy (2006).
Kamala Devi Harris is an American politician and attorney who is the 49th and incumbent vice president of the United States under President Joe Biden. She is the first female vice president and the highest-ranking female official in U.S. history, as well as the first African-American and first Asian-American vice president. A member of the Democratic Party, she was previously attorney general of California from 2011 to 2017 and a U.S. senator from California from 2017 to 2021.
Cecile Richards is an American activist who served as the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund from 2006 to 2018. In 2010, Richards was elected to the Ford Foundation board of trustees. In spring 2019, Richards co-founded Supermajority, a women's political action group.
Maya Lakshmi Harris is an American lawyer, public policy advocate, and writer. Harris was one of three senior policy advisors for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign's policy agenda and she also served as chair of the 2020 presidential campaign of her sister, Kamala Harris.
Tyler Perry's Madea's Tough Love is a 2015 American live action-animated comedy film directed by Frank Marino, written by Matt Fleckenstein and Benjamin Gluck produced by Tyler Perry, Matt Moore, and Ozzie Areu, and starring the voices of Perry, Cassi Davis, Rolonda Watts, Avery Kidd Waddell, Philip Anthony-Rodriguez, Georg Stanford Brown, Kevin Michael Richardson, Mari Williams, Indigo, Caitlyn Taylor Love, Maya Kay, Kate Higgins, and Bootsy Collins. The film tells the story of Madea being sentenced to community service at a youth center as she comes across a devious plot to destroy it. It was released on January 20, 2015. While the film is mainly animated and serves as Tyler Perry Studios' first live action-animated film, the beginning and ending scenes however are live-action like the other Madea films.
Brad L. Jenkins is an American producer. He is the managing director and executive producer of Funny or Die DC. Jenkins is the former associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.
Nik Dodani is an American actor, writer, and comedian known for his roles as Zahid in the Netflix comedy-drama series Atypical, and Pat Patel in the revival of the popular CBS sitcom Murphy Brown.
The 2020 presidential campaign of Kamala Harris, a United States senator from California from January 2017 to 2021, officially began on January 21, 2019, with an announcement on Good Morning America. Harris had widely been considered a "high profile" candidate for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries since 2016.
Shyamala Gopalan was a biomedical scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, whose work in isolating and characterizing the progesterone receptor gene stimulated advances in breast biology and oncology. She is the mother of Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris and Maya Harris, a lawyer and political commentator.
Painganadu Venkataraman Gopalan was an Indian career civil servant, a member of Central Secretariat Service who served as Director of Relief Measures and Refugees in the government of Zambia, especially the exodus of refugees from Southern Rhodesia. While in Zambia, he later served as Advisor to 1st President of Zambia Kenneth Kaunda. He served as Joint Secretary to the Government of India in 1960s. He is the maternal grandfather of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.
The political positions of Kamala Harris are reflected by her United States Senate voting record, public speeches, and interviews. Kamala Harris served as the junior senator from California from 2017 to 2021. On August 11, 2020, Harris was selected by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to be his running mate in the 2020 United States presidential election, running against incumbent U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. With Biden's election victory, Harris was subsequently elected as vice president. Harris was described by The New York Times as a pragmatic moderate, with policy positions that broadly mirror those of Biden. However, the non-partisan GovTrack rated Harris as the most liberal U.S. Senator, prompting debate over her position in center-left and left-wing politics. Despite this, left-wing activists have criticised Harris on numerous occasions for her past actions as a prosecutor, which have been called “right-wing”.
Donald Jasper Harris is a Jamaican-American economist and professor emeritus at Stanford University, known for applying post-Keynesian ideas to development economics. He is the father of the 49th and current vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris, as well as of her sister, lawyer and political commentator Maya Harris.
Kamala Harris is the 49th vice president of the United States. Harris was formerly the junior United States senator from California, and prior to her election to the Senate, she served as the 32nd attorney general of California. Her family includes several members who are notable in politics and academia.
Ella Rose Emhoff is an American model, artist, and fashion designer. As the daughter of U.S. Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and stepdaughter of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, she is a member of the Second Family of the United States.
Julie Chávez Rodriguez is an American political rights activist and campaign manager for the Joe Biden 2024 presidential campaign.
Kamala and Maya's Big Idea is a children's picture book written by Meena Harris and illustrated by Ana Ramírez González. The book was published in 2020 by Balzer + Bray and it was Harris' debut book as a children's author. The story is based on the childhood of Kamala and Maya Harris, the author's aunt and mother, respectively.
Fugitives, Smugglers, and Thieves: Piracy and Personhood in American Literature is the debut book by Mexican academic Sharada Balachandran Orihuela. It was published by University of North Carolina Press in 2018. It explores piracy and illegal trade in American literature as a form of self-representation by colonial subjects facing abjection due to exclusionary citizenship and property laws.
Nodeep Kaur is an Indian Dalit labour rights activist and member of the Mazdoor Adhikar Sangathan (MAS), one of the unions of industrial workers actively supporting the 2020–2021 Indian farmers' protest. Kaur was arrested from the Kundli Industrial Area by the Haryana Police on 12 January 2021 and had FIRs filed against her on a wide range of sections including unlawful assembly, assault and criminal force, trespass, extortion, snatching, criminal intimidation, and attempt to murder, based on statements made by a police inspector and the accountant of the company that had failed to pay protesting workers’ wages. She was allegedly beaten and sexually assaulted while in police custody. According to Kaur's lawyer, a medical report ordered after Kaur's arrest revealed wounds that pointed to a sexual assault.