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 | Family of Kamala Harris |
MeenakshiAshley Harris (born October 20, 1984) is an American lawyer, author, and theater producer. In theatre production, Harris won a Tony Award for producing A Strange Loop and was also nominated for producing Suffs . [3] Harris's first children's picture book, Kamala and Maya's Big Idea (2020), was released by HarperCollins' imprint Balzer + Bray; it was based on the story of her mother, Maya Harris, and aunt, Kamala Harris, the 49th vice president of the United States. [4]
In 2017, Harris founded the Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign, which creates statement fashion to support charity. [5]
Harris was born on October 20, 1984, to single parent Maya Lakshmi Harris, and the identity of her biological father remains unknown. [6] [7] [8] Her mother was 17 when she was born, and later became a lawyer and policy expert. Her aunt, Kamala Harris, is the 49th 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 emeritus professor of economics at Stanford University and a civil rights activist. [9]
Harris graduated from Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland. She earned her bachelor's degree from Stanford University in 2006, and her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 2012. [10]
In 2017, she founded the "Phenomenal" fashion company, Harris being inspired by a 1978 Maya Angelou poem titled Phenomenal Woman. [11] [12] [13] It then branched out to include the Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign, founded in 2017 as an organization that brings awareness to social causes. [5] 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. [14] 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. [15] Harris also operates Phenomenal Media for written content and Phenomenal Productions for videos and visual content. [16] In December 2020, it was announced that she and Brad Jenkins would launch a production studio called Phenomenal Productions. [17]
In 2020, Harris released her first children's picture book from HarperCollins' imprint Balzer + Bray titled 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, [18] and on March 14, 2023, her third children's book A Is for Ambitious was released, both printed by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. [19]
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. [20]
Previously, Harris also served as Head of Strategy & Leadership at Uber where her stepfather Tony West is chief legal officer, [21] and worked for international law firm Covington & Burling, software company Slack Technologies, and Facebook.
Harris married Nikolas Ajagu in 2014. He is the Global Head of Partnerships for Facebook’s Advertising Technology division. [22] The couple has two daughters. [23] [24]
Maya Rudolph is an American actress, comedian, and musician. From 2000 to 2007, she was a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL). During her tenure on the show, she appeared in 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 has been the 49th and current vice president of the United States since 2021 under President Joe Biden. She is the first female U.S. vice president, making her the highest-ranking female official in U.S. history. She is also the first African American and the first Asian American vice president. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the party's nominee in the 2024 presidential election, becoming the second woman nominated for president by a major U.S. political party. From 2017 to 2021, she represented California in the U.S. Senate, and was Attorney General of California from 2011 to 2017. From 2004 to 2011, she served as District Attorney of San Francisco.
Carson Friedman Ellis is a Canadian-born American children's book illustrator and artist. She received a Caldecott Honor for her children's book Du Iz Tak? (2016). Her work is inspired by folk art, art history, and mysticism.
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.
Sara Pennypacker is an American author of children's books. Her books, some of which have featured on the New York Times bestselling list, include Leeva At Last, Pax, Summer of the Gypsy Moths, the Clementine series, the Waylon series, and the Stuart books.
Yxta Maya Murray is an American Latina novelist and professor at Loyola Marymount School of Law.
Jeff Sampson is a young adult and children's author. He was born on a U.S. military base in Nuremberg, Germany on July 15, 1982. He started writing professionally at age eighteen. His first books were packaged series fiction. When Sampson was twenty-two, he had his first novel published as part of the Dragonlance series of fantasy novels. He since went on to write many original young adult and children's series, including Monster Slayers under the pen name Lukas Ritter for Wizards of the Coast; Deviants for Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins Children’s Books; and The Last Dogs under the pen name Christopher Holt for Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. Jeff Sampson currently lives in Seattle, Washington in the United States.
Margaret Dilloway is a Japanese American author best known for her novels How To Be An American Housewife and The Care And Handling Of Roses With Thorns.
Derek Anthony West is an American attorney, former government official, and the Senior Vice President and chief legal officer of Uber. Before Uber, West was Associate Attorney General of the United States and general counsel of PepsiCo. West previously served as the Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Division, the largest litigating division in the Department of Justice.
Shaker, Why Don't You Sing? is author and poet Maya Angelou's fourth volume of poetry, published by Random House in 1983. It was published during one of the most productive periods in Angelou's career; she had written four autobiographies and published three other volumes of poetry up to that point. Angelou considered herself a poet and a playwright, but was best known for her seven autobiographies, especially her first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, although her poetry has also been successful. She began, early in her writing career, alternating the publication of an autobiography and a volume of poetry. Many of the poems in Shaker focus on survival despite threatened freedom, lost love, and defeated dreams. Over half of them are love poems, and emphasize the inevitable loss of love. "Caged Bird", which refers to Angelou's first autobiography, is contained in this volume.
Rebecca Albertalli is an American author of young adult fiction and former psychologist. She is known for her 2015 debut novel, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, which was adapted into the 2018 film Love, Simon and inspired the spin-off television series Love, Victor. Albertalli has subsequently published seven additional novel-length works of young adult fiction, along with 2020's novella Love, Creekwood, from which Albertalli has donated all proceeds to The Trevor Project.
Abdi Nazemian is an Iranian-American author, screenwriter, and producer. His debut novel, The Walk-In Closet, won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Debut Fiction at the 27th Lambda Literary Awards. He has subsequently received a second Lambda Literary Award for his young adult novel Only This Beautiful Moment, as well as a Stonewall Book Award for Only This Beautiful Moment and a Stonewall Honor for Like a Love Story, both from the American Library Association.
Ibi Aanu Zoboi is a Haitian-American author of young adult fiction. She is best known for her young adult novel American Street, which was a finalist for the National Book Award for Young Adult's Literature in 2017.
Brandy Colbert is an American author of young adult fiction and nonfiction.
Painganadu Venkataraman "P. V." Gopalan was an Indian career civil servant who served with the Government of Zambia and the Government of India.
Donald Jasper Harris, is a Jamaican-American economist and emeritus professor at Stanford University, known for applying post-Keynesian ideas to development economics. He was the first Black scholar granted tenure in the Stanford Department of Economics, and he is the father of Kamala Harris, the incumbent vice president of the United States and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, and of Maya Harris, a lawyer, advocate and writer.
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 artist and fashion designer. As the daughter of U.S. Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and stepdaughter of Vice President Kamala Harris, she is a member of the Second Family of the United States.
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's 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.
The Partials Sequence is a book series by Dan Wells that was published by the HarperCollins imprint Balzer & Bray. The series is composed of a trilogy in addition to a novella prequel. The story is set in a dystopic New York and follows the protagonist Kira Walker.