Meet Danielle
Danielle believes that it’s time to put the “democracy” back in Democrat. She knows that Massachusetts is stronger when its strongest party is powerfully committed to full inclusion, engagement, and healthy competition. The Party’s job is to make sure our voices matter. That’s the beginning of healthy democracy.
“if you’re free, you need to free somebody else; if you have some power, you need to empower somebody else.”
Toni Morrison
Danielle's Foundation
Danielle’s mother and father met and married in California in the 1960s when the choice to marry whom they loved was still illegal in several states.
A librarian and professor, they raised their children to believe in their own voices and to be ready to lift them up on behalf of others.
Their education would be their only inheritance, her parents said, but would keep them free. Danielle graduated from Claremont High School and set out after that inheritance. She received degrees from Princeton University and the University of Cambridge and, in 1996, in fulfillment of her grandmother’s dream, reached Massachusetts, enrolling for a PhD in Government at Harvard.
Her maternal great-grandparents fought for women’s right to vote, and her great grand-dad marched with suffragettes on Boston Common. Her paternal grandfather helped found the first NAACP chapter in his northern Florida community, when doing so was to take your life in your hands.
They knew, and Danielle learned, that empowerment is the bedrock of human thriving.
Danielle and her husband, Jimmy, and their two middle schoolers, as well as two dogs, live in East Cambridge. The kiddos attend Cambridge Public Schools.
Danielle's Work
Danielle is an internationally-recognized democracy expert, Harvard prof, and mom. In 2020, Danielle won the equivalent of the Nobel Prize– the Kluge Prize, which is awarded by the Library of Congress for disciplines not covered by the Nobel.
Danielle’s civic service also includes serving on the Board of Higher Education, via appointment by Governor Healey; on the board of the Cambridge Health Alliance, via appointment by the City of Cambridge; and on the board of the Adams Presidential Center, based in Quincy, MA.
Danielle's Achievements
Danielle has worked tirelessly through her writing, policy work, and political advocacy to advance the causes of freedom and equality, and to lay economic and health foundations on which all can flourish. She is especially proud of her civic education initiative which is supporting teaching and learning in school districts across Massachusetts.
Her book, Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality, won the Francis Parkman Prize. Her book, Cuz: an American Tragedy, tells the story of her beloved younger cousin Michael, whom her family lost to gangs, incarceration, and who died in 2009. Her most recent book is Justice by Means of Democracy.
Danielle knows that her accomplishments don’t matter much unless they can be put in service of lifting the rock that has been placed on the back of too many young people of all races and backgrounds—hiding opportunity, limiting access to health care, diminishing the possibilities of education, exposing them to violence, instilling fear for the planet’s future.
Our constitutional democracy promises liberty and justice for all; it promises to be the road to empowerment.
For Danielle, it has been just that, and her greatest aspiration is that we build that road for all. MassDems can set a leadership standard for the country.
