Who is Nicole Shanahan? Wealthy lawyer from Silicon Valley is RFK Jr.’s vice president pick

Independent US presidential candidate, Robert F Kennedy Jr presented Silicon Valley lawyer and philanthropist Nicole Shanahan as his running mate on Tuesday (March 26).

Shanahan, who is the ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, has never been in the limelight and has never before run for political office.

Kennedy Jr. (aka RFK Jr.), best known for his anti-vaccine stance and public health conspiracies, is running as an independent candidate in the upcoming US presidential elections. Choosing a running mate is a prerequisite to be on the ballot in several states.

Here’s everything you need to know about Nicole Shanahan:

Nicole Shanahan: Wealthy lawyer and tech entrepreneur with a bare social media presence joins the VP race

Kennedy Jr.’s VP pick of Shanahan came as a wild card as the attorney doesn’t have any kind of public persona and is generally interested in niche policy issues like regenerative agriculture and gut biomes that rarely strike a chord with the commoners. But Shanahan’s abundant wealth can be of immense help for Kennedy Jr.

Born and raised in California, Nicole Shanahan is an American tech entrepreneur, lawyer and philanthropist who has a compelling rags-to-riches story of wealth and success. In one of her interviews with People magazine, she described her childhood as “very hard”. Her mother worked as a maid and accountant after her father passed away after suffering from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

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Shanahan attended the National University of Singapore and Santa Clara University School of Law. After practising law at various firms, she became the founder and CEO of a legal tech company called ClearAccessIP, based in Palo Alto. She later sold the company to a competitor IPwe in 2020.

After this, she invested in a biotech firm, LinusBio, and joined the board of Extreme Tech Challenge in 2023.

Meanwhile, after all these years of investments, she also established her private foundation, Bia-Echo in 2018.

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In 2022, Shanahan’s then-husband, Sergey Brin, donated at least $23 million in shares of Alphabet (Google’s parent company) to Bia-Echo. In 2019, Shanahan pledged to contribute $100 million over five years; mostly for research in reproductive longevity (programmes that help women become pregnant later in life).

Shanahan has made donations and contributions to political parties in the past as well. Like, during the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, Shanahan contributed $2800 each to the campaigns of Marianne Willaimson and Pete Buttigieg.

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She also co-hosted a fundraiser for Buttigieg in December 2019, along with other wealthy Silicon Valley figures. After Joe Biden became the presumptive nominee, she supported the Biden presidential campaign, contributing $25,000 to the Biden Victory Fund.

In recent months, Shanahan emerged as a prominent supporter of Kennedy’s campaign, financially backing his polarizing Super Bowl commercial, which mimicked a classic John F. Kennedy campaign advertisement, drawing criticism from Kennedy family members.

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Shanahan contributed $4 million to the Super PAC responsible for the ad, stating to the New York Times her belief in the potential to spotlight Kennedy’s candidacy and her alignment with his positions on environmental issues and vaccinations.

Her candidacy for vice president was reported by Mediaite on March 16 which was later confirmed by Kennedy on March 26.