CA-12: Lateefah Simon (D)
Lateefah Simon began her career of advocacy at age 16 as an outreach coordinator for the Young Women’s Freedom Center.
At age 18, she gave birth to her eldest daughter, Aminah, and quickly learned as a young single mother that government wasn’t working for people like her. A year later, she became executive director of YWFC and spent the next decade earning national acclaim for her advocacy on behalf of marginalized young women. In 2003, at age 26, Simon became the youngest woman to receive a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship.
Simon was later chosen by then-San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris to lead the creation of Back on Track.
She also served as executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, where she launched successful community-based initiatives such as the Second Chance Legal Services Clinic.
She would go on to become Program Director of the Rosenberg Foundation, where she launched a fund to incubate and accelerate bold ideas from the next generation of progressive leaders in California.
Born legally blind, she relies solely on public transportation to go about her day and sought to make BART more affordable for working families and transit-dependent people like herself.
Simon was also appointed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown to serve on the Board of Trustees for the California State University, the nation’s largest public university system, where she offered strategic advice on policy matters related to racial justice in higher education.
The above information was sourced from the candidate’s website.
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