Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman

Taren Kate Stinebrickner-Kauffman (born 14 November 1981) is an Australian-American activist. She is the founder of SumOfUs, and served as the executive director until 2016. In March 2012, she and her group were active critics of working conditions at Apple Inc. supplier Foxconn. From 2020 until 2022, Taren served as president of New Media Ventures, a non-profit venture capital firm focused on progressive organisations.

Early life Taren Kate Stinebrickner-Kauffman was born on 14 November 1981 in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, as the daughter of DePauw University professors, former Georgetown basketball player Bruce Stinebrickner and author Kelsey Kauffman, the granddaughter of Rear Admiral Draper Kauffman and great-granddaughter of Vice Admiral James L. Kauffman. She was raised in Greencastle, Indiana.

She graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in mathematics from Duke University in 2004.

Career

Stinebrickner-Kauffman has worked in social-impact technology, Democratic politics, consumer advocacy, corporate accountability, environmental advocacy, and the U.S. labor movement, including time with groups such as Avaaz.org, the Alliance for Climate Protection, MoveOn.org, and the AFL-CIO. She founded SumOfUs in 2011, serving as Executive Director and growing the organisation to 5 million members worldwide. She went on to serve as Senior Product Manager at Change.org, entrepreneur-in-residence at New Media Ventures, and then was the President of New Media Ventures starting in March 2022, leading the organisation during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic and prioritising work on voting rights and local media. She also serves on the board of Consumer Reports. After founding AI Impact Lab to help mission driven organizations leverage the generative AI, Taren is now CEO at The Golden Gate Institute for AI, a "think tank bridging disciplines, convening experts, and publishing accessible analysis of AI’s toughest questions".

Personal life Stinebrickner-Kauffman was the partner of Aaron Swartz from 2011 until his death. In 2011, Swartz was prosecuted by U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz for violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), and, facing the risk of up to 35 years imprisonment and $1 million in fines if he exercised his Sixth Amendment right to a public trial and was convicted, he died by suicide in 2013. She discovered his body.

She has two children via sperm donors.