MOTIVATION & LEADERSHIP
ALICIA GARZA
KIMBERLÉ CRENSHAW
BARBARA LEE
Principal of Black Futures Lab and co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter and the Black Lives Matter Global Network
New York Times best selling author of Finding My Voice; senior advisor to Barack Obama, the Obama Foundation and ATTN
Democratic US Representative, California; co-chair of House Democratic Leadership Team; human rights advocate
Alicia Garza is an activist, organizer, writer, and speaker. She founded Black Futures Lab to make Black communities powerful in politics. She is a co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter and the Black Lives Matter Global Network, an international organizing project to end state violence and oppression against Black people. Garza is strategy and partnerships director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance and co-founder of Supermajority, a new home for women’s activism. The author of a forthcoming book tentatively titled How to Turn a Hashtag Into a Movement, her writing has appeared in The Root, Cosmopolitan, The Guardian, TIME, Mic, and Vox. Garza has been recognized on The Root’s 2016 list of 100 African American achievers and influencers, among other honors.
She previously served as the senior advisor to U.S. President Barack Obama and assistant to the president for public engagement and intergovernmental affairs from 2009 to 2017. Before that, she served as a co-chair of the Obama–Biden Transition Project. She has been the CEO of the Obama Foundation since October 2021
Born and raised in Texas, Lee holds degrees from Mills College and the University of California, Berkeley. She started her career by working on the presidential campaign of Shirley Chisholm and was later involved with the Black Panther Party. After working as chief of staff for U.S. Representative Ron Dellums, Lee served in the California State Assembly from 1990 to 1996 and in the California State Senate from 1996 to 1998.
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In addition to being senior advisor to the president, Jarrett held other leadership positions and completed further duties. Among those included chairing the White House Council on Women and Girls and co-chairing the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault. In March 2014, she participated as a speaker on Voices in Leadership, an original Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health webcast series, in a discussion entitled, “Leadership in the White House,” moderated by Dr. Atul Gawande.
Lee was elected to the House of Representatives in a 1998 special election to succeed Dellums. A noted progressive, she chaired the Congressional Progressive Caucus from 2005 to 2009 and the Congressional Black Caucus from 2009 to 2011. She has played a major role in the antiwar movement, notably in her vocal criticism of the Iraq War and for being the only member of Congress to vote against the authorization of use of force following the September 11 attacks.
WOMEN ON THE RISE
