Jenna Arnold
Jenna Arnold is an American , serial entrepreneur and author of Raising Our Hands. She is known as the co-founder of ORGANIZE, for her work at the United Nations and MTV, and was a National Organizer for the Women's March on Washington. Oprah has called Arnold one of the "100 Awakened Leaders who are using their voice and talent to elevate humanity".
Early life
Arnold was born and raised in Elkins Park, outside Philadelphia, PA, where she attended Abington Friends School. She received a B.S. Ed. with a Minor in Astrophysics from University of Miami in 2003 and an M.A. in International Education Development from Columbia University Teachers College in 2005.”Career
Jenna Arnold is the author of, Raising Our Hands: How White Women Can Stop Avoiding Hard Conversations, Start Accepting Responsibility, and Find Our Place on the New Frontlines.Arnold began her career as an educator in Miami, where she was named Student Teacher of the Year, and then subsequently taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District. From 2005 - 2008, Arnold served the United Nations Works Programme as an Education and Media Specialist, where she created multi-platform programming with the United Nations Department of Public Information to co-brand the UN with celebrities, Fortune 500 companies, and other international institutions, including serving as the UN Producer for "The Diary of Jay-Z: Water for Life" in collaboration with MTV. Additionally, Arnold spearheaded the transition of the Showtime series "What's Going On?," featuring Angelina Jolie and Susan Sarandon, into classrooms as an educational tool. Additionally, she worked to develop K-12 curricula for the United Nations Cyber School Bus program.
In 2008 Arnold founded PressPlay, a boutique content creation firm focusing on global social issues through the use of human interest stories. Arnold's most high profile show, called “Exiled!”, was predicated on uprooting sheltered, affluent American teenagers to live with indigenous communities throughout Kenya, Thailand, Panama, Namibia, Brazil, India, Vanuatu, Norway, and Peru. “Exiled!” aired in over one hundred countries. Exiled! was sold to MTV, where Arnold became one of Viacom's youngest executive producers.
While leading PressPlay, Arnold also guided projects with Seeds of Peace, Ubuntu Education Fund, and Yéle, and produced educational content in partnership with the United Nations Foundation. Arnold also served as a Supervising Producer of the Dubai Documentary Film Festival, Documentary Voices and Chair of The Robin Hood Foundation's Food for Good Initiative in 2009. Arnold also served as a Board Member at Advocacy Lab and the Global Film Fund.
In 2012, Arnold founded a for-purpose, for-profit company called I Will Save the World, which delivers themed art and crafts projects to elementary school classrooms to engage students in social issues. In late 2013, she and co-founder Greg Segal launched ORGANIZE, a startup that aims to end the organ donation shortage by building sector-spanning partnerships, unified technology to streamline and increase organ donor registration and procurement, and propose legislation to overhaul the organ transplant system. Since its founding, ORGANIZE has built the United States’ first centralized organ donor registry and received an Innovator in Residence position in the Office of the Secretary in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Arnold was a featured presenter at the White House Organ Donation Summit in June 2016, which also included major partnership announcements with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and NASA, and a $300 million bioengineering investment from the United States Department of Defense. An Executive Order was subsequently signed and legislation proposed to increase the number of life-saving, transplantable organs.
In January 2017, Arnold was a National Organizer for the Women's March on Washington, the largest peaceful protest in human history. For the March, Arnold brokered partnerships with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and produced the run of show on the day of the March. Arnold continues to play a key role within the organization, and continues to advise the organization as a liaison to the tech community. Arnold co-created the Daring Discussions campaign, grown out of the Women's March movement, on Mother's Day 2017. She was a contributor to the best-selling book about organizing the march, Together We Rise: Behind the Scenes at the Protest Heard Around the World.
Awards & Recognition
Arnold was named one of Inc Magazine's "35 Under 35" in 2014 as well as one of Inc Magazine's "20 Most Disruptive Innovators of 2016". Arnold also received a TriBeCa Disruptive Innovator Fellowship, and her work at ORGANIZE has been featured in The New York Times for its groundbreaking partnership with Facebook to introduce social media sentiments into end of life conversations with someone's next of kin. In 2016, the New York Times also called ORGANIZE one of the year's "Biggest Ideas in Social Change." ORGANIZE's work to modernize the living donation technology infrastructure was also featured on the May 14th, 2017 episode of HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.Arnold's work has also been featured in the Washington Post, Forbes, Slate and FastCompany, CNN, Politico, US News, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee Full Frontal. Notably, an ESPN article recounts a story of Arnold negotiating with the Boston Red Sox during the 15th hour of labor during her first pregnancy. Her work at ORGANIZE has also been awarded the $1 Million First Prize in the 2014 Verizon Powerful Answers Award, a 2016 Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Award, the Inaugural Stanford MedX Health Care Design Award, and a 2016 Classy Award as one of the "Top 10 Most Innovative and Nonprofits and Social Enterprises in the World."
Arnold was called a Game Changer by New York Enterprise Report, a Media Mogul by New York Cares, and a Global Shaper by World Economic Forum. She was honored with the United Nations of America Award for Innovation in 2007 and was a 2014 Echoing Green Finalist. In May 2017, Arnold was honored at the Emily's List Gala along with two other National Organizers of the Women's March. In November 2017, Arnold won Glamour Women of the Year for her contributions to the Women’s March.