Nicole Shanahan

Nicole Ann Shanahan (born September 26, 1985) is an American attorney and entrepreneur. She was the running mate of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in his campaign in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

Born in California, Shanahan graduated from the University of Puget Sound and the Santa Clara University School of Law. She reportedly has a net worth of over $1 billion, primarily as a result of her marriage to Brin. In 2019, she established a private foundation, Bia-Echo, that promotes research to lengthen the human reproductive lifespan. Shanahan has questioned the scientific consensus on vaccine safety and efficacy.

Early life Nicole Ann Shanahan was born to Shawn and Amy Shanahan (née Wong) in Placer County, California, on September 26, 1985. In a 2023 interview, she said she had a "very hard" childhood marked by traumatic experiences and poverty. Shanahan said her father, a computer specialist of German and Irish descent Shanahan's mother was born in China and immigrated to the U.S. from Guangzhou in the 1980s; she worked as a maid before becoming an accountant. Shanahan has a younger brother.

Shanahan attended Saint Mary's College High School, a private Catholic school in Berkeley, California. She has said that while working at RPX Corp. one of her male co-workers sexually assaulted her, and that shortly after this she became severely depressed and left RPX Corp. a month before its IPO.

Career While in law school, Shanahan was an exchange student at National University of Singapore. She became interested in patent law as a law student; after becoming a lawyer, she founded a Palo Alto-based legal tech company, ClearAccessIP, and was its CEO. She was a fellow at Stanford Law School's CodeX, Stanford Center for Legal Informatics.

Shanahan served as executive producer for the films Kiss The Ground and Evolver.

Shanahan is a member of the board of Carbon Royalty Corp. She invested in Linus Biotechnology, Inc. (LinusBio), a biotech firm, during a venture funding round in January 2023. Also in 2023, she joined the board of Extreme Tech Challenge. She is the "Global Joy Officer" and a member of the board at the Sloomoo Institute.

Bia-Echo and advocacy In 2018, Shanahan helped fund and launch the Center for Female Reproductive Longevity and Equality within the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.

In 2019, It is named after Bia, the ancient Greek goddess associated with energy. He made another contribution to the foundation in 2021, but did not contribute in 2022. mostly for "reproductive longevity" research, which aims to help women become pregnant later in life. She has repeatedly criticized in vitro fertilization (calling IVF "one of the biggest lies that's being told about women's health today") and championed unconventional research that she believes might allow women to have children into their 50s (suggesting, for example, that exposure to sunlight might aid fertility).

Political contributions and involvement before 2024 In the 2010s and 2020s, Shanahan made various contributions to left-leaning organizations and Democratic political candidates, Also in 2020, she contributed $150,000 to support George Gascón's campaign for Los Angeles County District Attorney.

During the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, Shanahan contributed $2,800 each to the campaigns of Marianne Williamson and Pete Buttigieg. After Joe Biden became the presumptive nominee, she supported his campaign, contributing $25,000 to the Biden Victory Fund, Through Planeta Management LLC, Kennedy said that his campaign was not directly involved with the ad, as coordination between independent expenditure groups and campaigns is illegal. The campaign also considered Aaron Rodgers and Jesse Ventura. On March 26, 2024, Kennedy formally announced Shanahan as his selection for vice president during a campaign event in Oakland, California. Shanahan left the Democratic Party when she joined the ticket.

Shanahan was the richest candidate for vice president in at least 50 years, with a net worth possibly in the hundreds of millions of dollars. She gave almost $19 million on the Kennedy/Shanahan campaign, a small portion of her wealth. Shanahan was among the top self-funded candidates of the 2024 election cycle (although she spent less than David Trone, who spent over $60 million on the Democratic Senate primary in Maryland). The Kennedy campaign's efforts to get on the ballot in key states was supported by Republican megadonors and dark money organizations. In some states, the campaign pursued unconventional strategies to get on the ballot, such as forming new political parties or partnering with existing minor parties. For example, the Libertarian Party of Colorado attempted to give its ballot line to Kennedy and Shanahan (displacing the national Libertarian Party ticket of Chase Oliver and Mike ter Maat), but this effort was unsuccessful.

During their campaign, Shanahan and Kennedy expressed divergent views. Shanahan expressed support for banning abortion "between 15 and 18 weeks" while a Kennedy spokesman said "he believes the cutoff should be at fetal viability." In May 2024, Shanahan suggested that the campaign was intended to force a contingent election in the House of Representatives, (In U.S.) presidential elections, if no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes, a contingent election occurs, with the winner chosen by the House). Her first solo appearance on the campaign trail was a month and a half after Kennedy named her as his running mate. She suggested that the campaign had no realistic prospect of winning the general election; that "we draw votes from Trump"; and that if Kennedy remained in the race, it would "run the risk of" aiding Kamala Harris. Kennedy and Shanahan suspended their campaign two days later and endorsed Trump.

On August 27, 2024, Chris Cuomo interviewed Shanahan on NewsNation regarding Kennedy's endorsement of Trump. Shanahan specifically stated that she is not a Harris Democrat or a Trump Republican.

In October 2024, The Washington Post reported that Shanahan attempted to bribe a journalist from the same newspaper with US$500,000 to reveal the sources of a profile story on her.

Political views In interviews in 2024, Shanahan said she is "not an anti-vaxxer" but expressed support for Kennedy's anti-vaccine advocacy and questioned the scientific consensus on their safety and efficacy. and implied that childhood vaccines contribute to autism, a debunked notion that Kennedy has promoted for years. On X (formerly Twitter), she promoted COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, asserting that the vaccines are unsafe.

Shanahan believes that "electromagnetic pollution" from mobile phones and other devices are contributing to an "epidemic of chronic disease"

On January 28, 2025, Shanahan released a video on X where she threatened political retribution against any senator, Democrat or Republican, who did not vote to confirm her former presidential running mate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Shanahan specifically called out Republican senators Mitch McConnell and Lisa Murkowski, Democratic senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, and independent senator Bernie Sanders. In the video, Shanahan vowed that "I will personally fund challengers to primary you in your next election, and I will enlist hundreds of thousands to join me."

Personal life In 2014, Shanahan married Jeremy Asher Kranz, a San Francisco Bay Area investor and finance executive. They had dated since 2011. Shanahan had met Brin at a yoga festival in Lake Tahoe in 2014;

Shanahan and Brin's daughter was diagnosed with autism in 2020. In 2022, Shanahan sought the advice of Dr. Jack Kruse, a neurosurgeon turned paleo-diet advocate and wellness guru. Kruse blamed Shanahan and Brin for their daughter's autism, claiming that it was because Shanahan allowed her infant to receive vaccines and be exposed to artificial light and electromagnetic radiation. Kruse also accused Brin of participating in a plot by the U.S. government and "Big Tech" to use blue light to control the population. Shanahan took his advice and modified her home to limit non-sun light, as well as Wi-Fi and cellular signals. She also converted her swimming pool to saltwater. and Brin filed for divorce in January 2022. Forbes reported that Shanahan likely received around 2.6 million Alphabet Class B shares from Brin, worth $390 million in March 2024, and possibly an additional, equal amount of Class C shares. The pair met at the Burning Man festival in 2022.