Ashley Blazer Biden (born June 8, 1981) is an American social worker, activist, philanthropist, and fashion designer. She served as the executive director of the Delaware Center for Justice from 2014 to 2019. Prior to her administrative role at the center, Biden worked in the Delaware Department of Services for Children, Youth, and Their Families. She founded the fashion company Livelihood, which partners with the online retailer Gilt Groupe to raise money for community programs focused on eliminating income inequality in the United States, launching it at New York Fashion Week in 2017. Biden's parents are President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden.
Biden attended Wilmington Friends School, a private school run by the Religious Society of Friends in Wilmington.[14][13][15] She was on her school's lacrosse and field hockey teams.[16] When Biden was in elementary school, she discovered that the cosmetics company Bonne Bell tested its products on animals. She wrote a letter to the company asking them to change their policy on animal testing.[17] She later got involved in dolphin conservation, inspiring her father to work with Congresswoman Barbara Boxer to write and pass the 1990 Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act.[12] Biden made an appearance before members of the United States Congress to lobby for the legislation.[17]
Education and career
Biden studied cultural anthropology at Tulane University.[3] During her freshman year of college, she worked at Girls Incorporated, now Kingswood Academy, as a camp counselor.[18] She also interned at a summer program at Georgetown University, working with youth from Anacostia.[18] After college, Biden worked as a waitress at a pizza shop in Wilmington for a few months before starting her career in social work.[13] She moved to Kensington, Philadelphia, and started a job as a clinical support specialist at the Northwestern Human Services Children's Reach Clinic, assisting youth and their families with accessing resources and working directly with psychiatrists and therapists.[18][13] She obtained a master's of social work degree from the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy and Practice in 2010.[15][17] She was one of twelve graduates who received the John Hope Franklin Combating American Racism Award.[19]
Social work and activism
Biden works as a social justice activist and social worker.[16] After finishing graduate school, she gained a job at West End Neighborhood House, a non-profit organization, as their Employment and Education Liaison for adjudicating youth developing various employment and job skills training programs.[18][13] She worked as a social worker in the Delaware Department of Services for Children, Youth, and Their Families for fifteen years.[17][3] While working for the department, Biden created programs for youth focusing on juvenile justice, foster care, and mental health.[17] In 2008 she was listed in Delaware Today's "40 People to Watch" for her work in the department.[20] In 2012, she joined the Delaware Center for Justice as an associate director, focusing on criminal justice reform in the state.[17][12][4] She helped establish and run programs and services at the center focused on public education, adult victim services, gun violence, incarcerated women, and community reentry.[18] Overseeing all direct servicing programs at the center, Biden worked with victims of crime, adjudicated youth, elderly prisoners, adults on probation and parole, truant youth, and Pennsylvania courts of common pleas clients who were eligible for mediation.[18] In 2014, she was promoted to executive director of the center, and served in that capacity until 2019.[17][21] She implemented a program called SWAGG: Student Warriors Against Guns and Gangs, endorsed by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which provides educational resources and community-based support groups aimed at eliminating violent crimes and gang activity among youth in New Castle County.[18]
Biden playing with children at the Mapetla Day Care Centre in Soweto, South Africa during an official visit in June 2010
In 2014, Biden criticized the death penalty, stating that it is not cost effective and wastes resources that could go towards victim services and crime prevention.[18]
She founded the Young@Art program that provides resources and outlets for students to create artwork while they are detained in detention facilities, and then sells the art in the community.[18] Half of the proceeds of the art go directly to the artists, and the other half goes into funding the program to buy art supplies and to pay the wages of youth who work at the community art shows.[18] Through the program, Biden also teaches the students business and financial literacy skills.[18]
Fashion
In 2017, Biden launched the Livelihood Collection, an ethical fashion clothing brand, at Spring Place in TriBeCa during New York Fashion Week.[22][17][23][24] The launch event was attended by Biden's parents and celebrities including Olivia Palermo and Christian Siriano.[25][26] The brand collaborated with Gilt Groupe and Aubrey Plaza to raise $30,000 for the Delaware Community Foundation.[17][27][28] Livelihood's logo, an arrow piercing through the letters "LH", was inspired by Biden's half-brother Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015.[29][30] Biden stated that "[Beau] was my bow. His cancer brought me to my knees. I had no choice but to shoot forward, keep going, keep aiming at my own dreams."[29]
Biden created the brand to help combat income inequality and racial inequality in the United States.[17][12] All the proceeds from the brand launch at New York Fashion Week were allocated to programs for communities in need.[31][32][33] Ten percent of the brand's continued sales are donated to community organizations in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and the Riverside in Wilmington.[29] Livelihood's products are made with American-sourced organic cotton and are manufactured in the United States.[34][35] She decided to design hoodies due to their connection to the Labor Movement, and their symbolic significance toward social justice movements.[34][36] The brand's website provides information about civic engagement and economic justice.[34][35]
In June 2020, Biden designed the uniforms for the staff at the Hamilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., as an offshoot of her Livelihood Collection[29][43][44] The uniforms were unveiled at a private launch party.[43] The hotel donated $15,000 to Livelihood.[29][43]
Biden is a practicing Catholic.[52] She joined her husband, father, and brother in a private audience with Pope Francis in the Vatican in 2016.[53][54]
Victim of diary theft
In 2020, Biden's personal diary was stolen and sold to the right-wing activist group Project Veritas.[55] Two Florida residents admitted in federal court in 2022 to having stolen the diary as well as other personal items from Biden, transporting the items across state lines, and selling them to Project Veritas.[56]
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