Vanessa Wruble (born August 27, 1974) is an American entrepreneur, journalist, and activist. In 2017, Wruble co-founded and served as Head of Campaign Operations of the

2017 Women's March The Women's March was a worldwide protest on January 21, 2017, the day after Inauguration of Donald Trump, the inauguration of Donald Trump as US president. It was prompted by Trump's policy positions and rhetoric, which protesters called Misog ...

and founded March On where she is executive director.

Personal life

Early life and education

Wruble grew up in

Washington, D.C ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

, the daughter of Bernhardt K. Wruble, a prominent lawyer appointed by

President Jimmy Carter James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 76th governor of Georgia from 1 ...

as the first director of the

Office of Government Ethics The United States Office of Government Ethics (OGE) is an independent agency within the executive branch of the U.S. Federal Government which is responsible for directing executive branch policies relating to the prevention of conflicts of intere ...

. She graduated from

Sidwell Friends Sidwell Friends School is a Quaker school located in Bethesda, Maryland and Washington, D.C., offering pre-kindergarten through high school classes. Founded in 1883 by Thomas W. Sidwell, its motto is ' ( en, Let the light shine out from all), a ...

High School, a

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

school. She earned a BA (cum laude) from

Williams College Williams College is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a col ...

, studying women’s issues, psychology, and fiction writing, and Master's degrees in social research in psychology from

The New School The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...

and in interactive media from

NYU New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-United States Secretary of the Treasu ...

Early career

With the launch of

Al Gore Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Gore was the Democratic Part ...

Current TV Current TV was an American television channel which broadcast from August 1, 2005, to August 20, 2013. Prior INdTV founders Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, with Ronald Burkle, each held a sizable stake in Current TV. Comcast and DirecTV each held a smalle ...

, Wruble served as the company's first international correspondent. She also worked as a journalist for print magazines and as a communication specialist for the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

OkayAfrica

In 2011, together with

The Roots The Roots are an American hip hop band formed in 1987 by Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter and Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The Roots serve as the house band on NBC's ''The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy F ...

frontman

Questlove Ahmir Khalib Thompson (born January 20, 1971), known professionally as Questlove (stylized as ), is an American musician, record producer, disc jockey, filmmaker, music journalist, and actor. He is the drummer and joint frontman (with Black Thou ...

, Wruble founded

OkayAfrica OkayAfrica (stylized as okayafrica) is a digital media platform dedicated to African culture, music and politics. Founded in 2011 by Vanessa Wruble and Ginny Suss as a sister site to The Roots frontman Questlove's Okayplayer, the site has become ...

, a digital media platform dedicated to

African culture African or Africans may refer to: * Anything from or pertaining to the continent of Africa: ** People who are native to Africa, descendants of natives of Africa, or individuals who trace their ancestry to indigenous inhabitants of Africa *** Ethn ...

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...

and

politics Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...

. She helped the company become the largest US-based website focusing on new and progressive music, art, politics, and culture from the African continent. She ran the company for seven years until she stepped down to organize the

Activism

Women's March

Wruble co-founded the Women's March on Washington, and served as head of campaign operations. In an effort to bring diversity to the march's leadership, she brought on three of its four national co-chairs,

Carmen Perez Carmen Beatrice Perez (born January 21, 1977) is an American activist and Chicana feminist who has worked on issues of civil rights including mass incarceration, women's rights and gender equity, violence prevention, racial healing and community p ...

Linda Sarsour Linda Sarsour (born 1980) is an American political activist. She was co-chair of the 2017 Women's March, the 2017 Day Without a Woman, and the 2019 Women's March. She is also a former executive director of the Arab American Association of N ...

, and

Tamika Mallory Tamika Danielle Mallory (born September 4, 1980) is an American activist. She was one of the leading organizers of the 2017 Women's March, for which she and her three other co-chairs were recognized in the ''TIME'' 100 that year. She received t ...

, to serve alongside

Bob Bland Mari Lynn Foulger (born December 17, 1982), better known as Bob Bland, is an American fashion designer and activist. Bland co-chaired the 2017 Women's March but later resigned from the 2019 Women's March board following accusations of antisemit ...

. The march was originally called the "Millions Women's March". Wruble renamed it "The Women's March on Washington" to avoid overwriting the history of the 1997 Millions Women's March in Philadelphia. Eventually Wruble, who is Jewish, left the Women's March Movement, citing

antisemitic Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...

comments by Mallory and Perez and antisemitic sentiment in the movement generally.

March On

In October 2017, Wruble led the leaders of the decentralized nationwide Women's Marches to form a new organization, March On. In addition, they launched a Super PAC called March On's Fight Back PAC. March On takes a bottom-up approach to coordinate actions at the federal, state, and local level, by joining together the various women's groups around the nation to work together. March On announced the goal of creating political change through its "March On the Polls" campaign, including marching people to voting booths for the November 2018 midterms (a "March On the Midterms"). On January 20, 2018, March On launched a nationwide poll to help design the liberal activist agenda for the 2018 midterms and beyond.

Honors and awards

* ''

Echoing Green In audio signal processing and acoustics, an echo is a reflection of sound that arrives at the listener with a delay after the direct sound. The delay is directly proportional to the distance of the reflecting surface from the source and the list ...

Fellow 1996'' * '' Glamour Women of the Year 2017'' * ''2017 PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wruble, Vanessa 1974 births Living people American activists American women journalists Williams College alumni Sidwell Friends School alumni The New School alumni New York University alumni Jewish American community activists Jewish American journalists Jewish feminists Women's March 21st-century American Jews 21st-century American women