Former First Lady of California, Broadcast Journalist and Author

Maria Shriver is the mother of four, a Peabody and Emmy-winning journalist and producer, a six-time New York Times best-selling author, and one of the world's most influential voices on the shifting roles, emerging power and evolving needs of women in modern life. Maria Shriver was California's trailblazing First Lady from 2003 through the end of 2010.

Shriver's work is driven by the belief that everyone has the ability to be an Architect of Change, a term she coined to describe anyone who sees a problem in their life or community, steps out of their comfort zone as leaders, and seeks to create the solution. She dedicates her life to creating empowering initiatives, transformative events, groundbreaking reports, inspirational awards and engaging online communities that enable people all over the world to follow in that mission.

With a career in journalism spanning more than two decades, Maria Shriver was a network news correspondent and anchor for CBS and NBC. She took a leave of absence from network news in 2004, but continued to train her journalist's eye on the transformative societal trends impacting women as breadwinners, caretakers, consumers and the world's Architects of Change. In 2009, she published the "The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything," which revealed that women, for the first time in our nation's history, represented half of all U.S. workers. The report examined how that fact is changing everything about how we live and work today. In 2010, she published "The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Takes on Alzheimer's," which was the largest study ever conducted to look at the significant impact of Alzheimer's disease on women who, the study found, make up the majority of patients and caregivers. Both Shriver Reports ignited national conversations about the changing status of women that continue on today.

While Maria Shriver served as California's First Lady, she redefined the office by approaching it not simply as an honorary role, but as a job with a real purpose and a platform to make a difference. In addition to playing key political and strategic roles in both of her husband's campaigns, she created pioneering programs and initiatives that addressed the emerging needs of women, the working poor, military families and families struggling with Alzheimer's, and the intellectually and developmentally disabled. Shriver organized her office's innovative initiatives under a banner called "WE" with the goal of showing Californians "what WE can do together when WE come together."