02/03/2021
Fun Facts
Did you know?
That Stacey Yvonne Abrams is dedicated to service - not just politics.
She was born in Wisconsin, but grew up in both Mississippi and Georgia. Both of her parents are Methodist ministers and she has 5 siblings.
She graduated magna cm laude Spelman College, an HBCU, with a BA in political science, economics and sociology. She also earned a Masters of Public Affairs from Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and a Juris Doctor (JD) from Yale Law School. She was called to the bar in Georgia.
She has achieved major firsts. Abrams was appointed Atlanta's Deputy City Attorney at just 29 years old. She also was the first woman to lead either party in the Georgia General Assembly in 2006, and she was the first Black person elected to lead in the Georgia House of Representatives in 2010. In 2018, she won the Democratic nomination for Governor of the state of Georgia, making her the first black woman in the U.S. to be a major party's nominee for governor. Unfortunately, she later lost that election.
In 2019, she was first African-American woman to give the rebuttal to the State of the Union (SOTU) address, as well as the first and only non-office-holding person to do so since SOTU responses began in 1966.
Most recently, it was her effort, support and serving as an elector for the state of Georgia that lead to a larger boost in Georgia’s Democratic votes, specifically, an estimated 800,000 new voter registrations, and helped President Biden win the Presidential Election. Her extraordinary efforts also led to both of Georgia’s historically Republican Senate seats flipping to Democratic this past election cycle.
Outside her political and public service career, she has co-founded a financial services firm, NOW Corp., co-founded a beverage company, Nourish, Inc., and co-founded a legal consulting firm, Sage Works. She is also an award winning author, has published many articles on different policies, won numerous awards and has recently been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.