Jennifer Siebel Newsom is an award-winning filmmaker, influential thought leader on gender equality, and the First Partner of California. After graduating with honors from Stanford University and Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, she wrote, directed, and produced the award-winning documentary Miss Representation (2011), which explores the media’s misrepresentation of women and girls and the resulting underrepresentation of women in positions of power and influence in America. As a result of Miss Representation’s impact, she launched The Representation Project, a nonprofit organization that uses film, media, and education as catalysts for cultural transformation. Her second film as a director, The Mask You Live In (2015), explores the boy crisis in America and how America’s narrow definition of masculinity is harming boys, men, and society at large. Her third film, The Great American Lie (2019), reveals how the US value system of money, power, and control has glorified individualism, institutionalized inequality, and undermined most Americans’ ability to achieve the American Dream. Jennifer’s fourth film as a director, Fair Play (2022), takes a deep look at domestic inequity, making visible the invisible care work historically held by women and illuminating the benefits for men and families when they lean into more care at home. Jennifer’s upcoming film, Miss Representation 2.0, exposes how technology is the newest backlash against girls’ and women’s mental health, agency, and political efficacy with misogyny and sexism on steroids. Jennifer also executive-produced the Emmy Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering’s documentary The Invisible War (2012) and was an executive producer on the Emmy Award-winning documentaries The Hunting Ground (2015) and On the Record (2020).
Jennifer’s films have been seen by tens of millions of people worldwide, and The Representation Project’s social action hashtag campaigns have reached more than 830 million people. The Representation Project is responsible for single-handedly shifting the norm of sexist Super Bowl ads with the #NotBuyingIt campaign. Similarly, their #AskHerMore campaign transformed sexist red-carpet reporting and empowered women in Hollywood to address industry inequalities, giving early momentum to the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.
Since becoming First Partner of California, Jennifer has championed issues related to gender equity and raising healthy, whole children, launching the initiatives #EqualPayCA, California For All Kids, California For All Women, and California For All Communities. Jennifer lives in California with her husband, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and their four young children.
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Photo by Andrew Paynter