Oliver was born in Indianapolis to a white mother and black father. As a youth, she witnessed her father serve multiple sentences for failing to pay child support. The experience was a motivating factor for her work countering the injustices of the American justice system. Oliver attended Seattle Pacific University and earned a degree in Sociology in 2008. At Seattle Pacific, Oliver became involved with student government and led a racial justice campaign called Catalyst. She also became involved with the local Black Lives Matter organization. Oliver earned her Juris Doctorate from the University of Washington School of Law in 2015 and Masters of Education from the University of Washington College of Education in 2016. Oliver worked as an intern for ACLU of Washington, intervention specialist, and chaplain at the Youth Detention Center. In 2015, she was awarded the Artist Human Rights Leader Award by the City of Seattle's Human Rights Commission.
Leadership and activism
2017 mayoral campaign
Oliver declared her candidacy for mayor of Seattle in March 2017, expecting to run against incumbent mayor Ed Murray, though he resigned due to multiple allegations of sexual assault before the election. Oliver announced she would be representing the "Peoples Party of Seattle" — a collection of community and civic leaders, lawyers, artists, activists and teachers that started organizing after the 2016 presidential election. At the time, Oliver was a part-time teacher at Washington Middle School and Franklin Middle School and provided mostly pro-bono services as an attorney. She also worked for Creative Justice, an arts-based alternative to incarceration. Her campaign focused on a "radical rethinking of criminal justice investments; revisiting the city’s housing proposals to extract more from developers for affordable housing; slowing gentrification; and examining an even higher minimum wage than the recent landmark achievement of $15 an hour." She also brought attention to issues like homelessness, institutional racism, and poverty.
Oliver has worked as an organizer for Seattle’s No Youth Jail and Black Lives Matter movements. She works as co-director of Creative Justice Northwest, a nonprofit organization that offers programs to youth most impacted by the school-to-prison pipeline. Following the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Oliver helped organize and spoke at numerous protests in Seattle. During a closed-door meeting with Mayor Jenny Durkan, Police Chief Carmen Best, and other community leaders, Oliver recorded live-streamed the discussion. She has been an advocate for de-funding the police and civic investment in community-based public health and public safety strategies. Oliver has also spoken about outside spending on local political campaigns. In 2017, she was named one of Seattle's Most Influential Seattlelites by Seattle Magazine. She co-drafted a resolution for Seattle’s divestment from the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2017. In January 2020, Oliver was featured as the keynote speaker for the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration at Edmonds Community College. She has been featured as a guest lecturer and speaker at the University of Michigan, Reed College,, the Stanley Ann Dunham Scholarship Fund,, KTCS 9, Pod Save the People, and Town Hall Seattle.
