Tarana Burke

Tarana Burke was born on September 12, 1973, in New York City. She is the activist who launched the MeToo movement. In 2006, Burke created Me Too as a youth program aimed at junior and high school students, designed to tackle widespread sexual violence in their communities. More than ten years later, in 2017, #MeToo exploded as a viral hashtag after actress Alyssa Milano urged women to tweet the phrase if they had faced abuse or harassment, following the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse cases. The phrase and hashtag quickly grew into a broad, eventually global, movement. That same year, *Time* magazine named Burke one of "the silence breakers"—a group of prominent activists—and awarded them the 2017 Person of the Year title. In 2018, Burke founded me too. International to serve as an organizational home for the movement, and she now works as its Chief Vision Officer. In 2020, Harvard University published a case study on her work.

Burke grew up in the Bronx, New York, attending Catholic primary school and Herbert H. Lehman High School. Her interest in community organizing began in the late 1980s when she joined a youth development group called the 21st Century Youth Leadership Movement. She went on to study at Alabama State University, a historically Black college, and later at Auburn University at Montgomery. During college, she organized press conferences and protests focused on racial justice, and she has led initiatives addressing racial discrimination, housing inequality, and economic justice.

Burke has been an activist since 1989. After graduating, she moved to Selma, Alabama, in the late 1990s. While working with survivors of sexual violence, she founded the nonprofit Just Be Inc. in 2003, an all-girls program for Black girls aged 12 to 18. In 2006, she started the MeToo movement, using the phrase "Me Too" to highlight how common sexual abuse and assault are in society. In 2008, she relocated to Philadelphia, working at Art Sanctuary Philadelphia and other nonprofits. She also served as a consultant for the 2014 film *Selma*, which depicted the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches led by James Bevel, Hosea Williams, Martin Luther King Jr., and John Lewis. Later, Burke became senior director at Girls for Gender Equity. She is a frequent public speaker and has published two instant *New York Times* bestsellers: *You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience* (co-authored with Brené Brown, 2021) and *Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement* (2021). She currently serves as Co-Founder and Chief Vision Officer for me too. International.

In 1997, while in Alabama, Burke met a girl named Heaven who told her about being sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend. Burke says she didn’t know what to say and never saw the girl again, later wishing she had simply said "me too." This experience, along with others, led her to believe that girls needed different attention than their male peers, prompting her to found Just Be Inc. The organization promotes the wellness of young women of color aged 12 to 18. Burke created a Myspace page for the group in 2006, and Just Be Inc. received its first grant in 2007.

As of December 2017, Burke was Senior Director of Girls for Gender Equity in Brooklyn, an organization that helps young women of color through various programs and classes. After the #MeToo hashtag went viral in 2017, Milano quickly acknowledged Burke’s earlier work on Twitter, writing that she had just learned of the earlier movement and found its origin story "equal parts heartbreaking and inspiring." Burke has supported the hashtag. Her speaking engagements have included Brown University in February 2018 and Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh, where she discussed the movement’s roots. In 2021, she published a memoir, *Unbound*, linking her activism to experiences with civil rights leaders.

Burke has received several honors: 2017 *Time* Person of the Year; 2018 *Time* 100 Most Influential People; 2018 The Ridenhour Prize for Courage; 2018 SheKnows Media VOTY Catalyst Award; 2019 Trailblazer Award; and 2022 BBC 100 Women.