Heather McGhee

Last updated
Heather McGhee
HeatherMcGeeCitizenUniversity.png
Born
Heather Charisse McGhee

(1980-06-06) June 6, 1980 (age 45)
Chicago, IL
Education Yale University (BA)
University of California, Berkeley (JD)
SpouseCassim Shepard [1]

Heather Charisse McGhee (born June 6, 1980) is a New York Times bestselling author and policy advocate. She is a former president and currently a trustee emeritus of Demos, a non-profit progressive U.S. think tank. [2] McGhee is a regular contributor to NBC News and frequently appears as a guest and panelist on Meet the Press , All In with Chris Hayes , and Real Time with Bill Maher . [3] [4] [5] [6]

Contents

Early life and education

Heather Charisse McGhee grew up in the South Side, Chicago and is the daughter of Gail C. Christopher and Earl J. McGhee. [5] In seventh grade, McGhee enrolled in The Bement School as a boarding student. [7] graduated from Milton Academy in 1997. [8] McGhee received a B.A. in American Studies from Yale University in 2001. [5] She was initially drawn to theater and creative writing but eventually became interested in economic policy. [5]

McGhee attended the UC Berkeley School of Law, citing how law school could help give her the credentials to change public policy. She graduated with a J.D. in 2009. [3] [5] [9]

Career

Positions

After graduating from Yale in 2001, she taught English in Barcelona for a short time, but soon after the September 11 attacks she moved to Hollywood to pursue a career in television writing. [10]

After about a year, she moved to New York City and began working with the non-profit think tank, Demos. [5] In 2003, McGhee first connected with Elizabeth Warren and her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, on the topic of credit card debt. [5]

She left Demos to attend law school and serve as a Deputy Policy Director for the John Edwards 2008 presidential campaign.

McGhee returned to Demos in 2009 and co-chaired a task force with Americans for Financial Reform which helped develop the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2009. [11] McGhee became the president of Demos in 2014. [5] [9] [12] In early 2018, she stepped down as president but remained a distinguished senior fellow at Demos. [13]

In December 2019 McGhee became chair of the board of directors of Color of Change. [14]

Appearances and talks

In 2016, McGhee's televised phone conversation with a man named Gary on C-SPAN who admitted racial prejudice ("I'm a White male, and I am prejudiced. The reason it is something I wasn't taught but it's kind of something that I learned.") was widely covered by news media organizations and viewed over a million times. [15] [16] [17] [18] A year later, Gary stated he had taken her advice to heart and his views had changed. [19] [15]

In 2019, McGhee presented a TED talk entitled "Racism has a cost for everyone." [20]

In 2021, McGhee was interviewed by Christiane Amanpour on CNN, titled "Why racism hurts everyone, regardless of race." [21]

McGhee has appeared on episodes of Pod Save America and was a guest host for a live recording of the podcast in Boston. [22] [23]

In September 2022, McGhee gave a brief interview with NPR's Ari Shapiro to discuss the student debt crisis. [24]

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

In March 2021, her book The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together debuted at #3 on the New York Times best seller list (for non-fiction). In it she discusses what she calls "drained-pool politics", symbolized by the wilful shutting down of public swimming pools in the South in response to desegregation mandates. [25] [26] She argues that white Americans "have been steeped in the notion of 'zero sum' — that any gains by another group must come at white people's expense." [27] She believes "the task ahead, then, is to unwind this idea of a fixed quantity of prosperity and replace it with what I've come to call Solidarity Dividends: gains available to everyone when they unite across racial lines, in the form of higher wages, cleaner air and better-funded schools." [28]

The Sum of Us Podcast

In July 2022, McGhee debuted "The Sum of Us Podcast", which expands on her book by the same title. [29]

References

  1. ↑ "Heather McGhee, Cassim Shepard". New York Times. October 2, 2016. Archived from the original on April 15, 2023. Retrieved April 9, 2023.
  2. ↑ "American Continental Group adds Brady aide". POLITICO. 27 February 2018. Archived from the original on 2018-04-10. Retrieved 2018-04-09.
  3. 1 2 Leland, John (2015-08-28). "How Heather McGhee, President of Demos, an Advocacy Group, Spends Her Sundays". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2018-04-10. Retrieved 2018-04-09.
  4. ↑ ""This is the fight": Demos's Heather McGhee on the upside to Trump's racial politics". Vox. Archived from the original on 2018-04-10. Retrieved 2018-04-09.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Cadei, Emily. "A Think Tank Queen Vying for a Seat at DC's Table". OZY. Archived from the original on 2021-05-22. Retrieved 2018-04-09.
  6. ↑ "What Would Happen If Everyone In America Who Could Vote, Did Vote?". Sky Valley Chronicle. 7 April 2018. Archived from the original on 7 April 2018.
  7. ↑ "Q&A with Heather McGhee | C-SPAN.org". www.c-span.org. Archived from the original on 2022-10-13. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  8. ↑ "Fulfilling Dr. King's Dream: A Charge From Alumna Heather McGhee". Milton Academy. Archived from the original on 2018-04-10. Retrieved 2018-04-09.
  9. 1 2 "Powerful Women Leaders: Heather McGhee". College Magazine. 2018-01-25. Archived from the original on 2018-04-10. Retrieved 2018-04-09.
  10. ↑ "The Inexhaustible Optimist: Meet Heather McGhee, President of Demos | The M Dash". MM.LaFleur. 2017-06-30. Archived from the original on 2018-04-10. Retrieved 2018-04-09.
  11. ↑ "Heather McGhee". HuffPost. Archived from the original on 2020-06-25. Retrieved 2018-04-09.
  12. ↑ "Heather McGhee '01: on your left". Yale Alumni Magazine. Archived from the original on 2018-04-10. Retrieved 2018-04-09.
  13. ↑ Evans, Garrett (2018-02-27). "Lobbying World". The Hill. Archived from the original on 2018-04-09. Retrieved 2018-04-09.
  14. ↑ "COLOR OF CHANGE ANNOUNCES HEATHER MCGHEE AS NEW CHAIR OF BOARD OF DIRECTORS". Color of Change. December 9, 2021. Archived from the original on January 22, 2021. Retrieved March 6, 2021.
  15. 1 2 Itkowitz, Colby (2016-08-24). "A C-SPAN caller asked a black guest how to stop being prejudiced. Here's how she responded" . Washington Post. ISSN   0190-8286. Archived from the original on 2018-04-10. Retrieved 2018-04-09.
  16. ↑ Smith, Daniel (2016-12-26). "A Friendship for a More Tolerant America". The New Yorker. ISSN   0028-792X. Archived from the original on 2018-04-10. Retrieved 2018-04-09.
  17. ↑ Moye, David (2016-08-24). "White Caller Admits He's Prejudiced. C-SPAN Guest Helps Him Do Better". HuffPost. Archived from the original on 2020-06-23. Retrieved 2020-06-22.
  18. ↑ "A White Man Asked C-Span How to Stop Being Racist. Here's the Fascinating Answer". Fortune. Archived from the original on 2018-04-10. Retrieved 2018-04-09.
  19. ↑ Itkowitz, Colby. "A C-Span caller confessed his racism to a black guest. A year later, he says he's changed". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on 2019-04-05. Retrieved 2018-04-09.
  20. ↑ "Racism has a cost for everyone". TED. 16 April 2020. Archived from the original on 2021-04-21. Retrieved 2021-02-18.
  21. ↑ "Why racism hurts everyone, regardless of race". CNN. 16 February 2021. Archived from the original on 2021-02-17. Retrieved 2021-02-18.
  22. ↑ McGhee, Heather C. [@hmcghee] (2019-04-11). "I'm in Boston guest hosting on the @PodSaveAmerica live show tonight. These guys have too much fun...pic.twitter.com/zdnXNftGsb" (Tweet). Retrieved 2020-01-12– via Twitter.
  23. ↑ "You can't be a woke Hungarian fascist". Crooked Media. August 9, 2019. Archived from the original on January 12, 2020. Retrieved January 12, 2020.
  24. ↑ "The role of states in contributing to the student debt crisis". NPR.org. Archived from the original on 2022-10-13. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  25. ↑ Blake, John (March 5, 2021). "A drained swimming pool shows how racism harms White people, too". CNN . Retrieved March 6, 2021.
  26. ↑ Wong, Felicia; Tomasky, Michael (April 20, 2023). "Heather McGhee on Moving Beyond "Drained-Pool Politics"". The New Republic .
  27. ↑ Szalai, Jennifer (February 23, 2021). "'The Sum of Us' Tallies the Cost of Racism for Everyone". The New York Times.
  28. ↑ McGhee, Heather C. (February 13, 2021). "The Way Out of America's Zero-Sum Thinking on Race and Wealth". The New York Times.
  29. ↑ Vanderhoof, Erin (July 20, 2022). "Heather McGhee Is Telling Untold Stories About Solidarity in a New Podcast". Vanity Fair . Archived from the original on August 12, 2022. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
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