Lateefah Simon
In honor of Black History Month, every day The Cardinal will feature a prominent and historical Black American, living or dead, who has worked toward change, advancement, and/or world peace. Some of them are heroes, and some are unsung heroes who have made a contribution to society.
February 3, 2021
Lateefah Simon, born on January 29, 1977, in San Francisco, California, is president of the Akonadi Foundation, since 2016, and a huge advocate for racial justice, civil rights, and juvenile justice.
Simon has led the creation of San Francisco’s Re-Entry Division with Back on Track, which is an advocacy program for young adults who are charged with low-level felony drug sales, under San Francisco District Attorney (and future Vice President of the United States) Kamala Harris. She has also been the executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area as well as the program director of the Rosenberg Foundation.
In 2003, Simon was the youngest woman to ever receive a MacArthur Fellowship, because of her leadership of the Center for Young Women’s Development since the age of 19 when she started working with them. Later, 2016, she was elected to represent the seventh district on the Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) board of directors. Her motivation involved her reliance on BART daily to help her get to work and take her daughters to school because she is legally blind and unable to drive. Recently, in 2020, she was elected president of BART’s board of directors.
She is now currently a mother of two children and has written about the difference in how she was treated as an unwed mother and a widowed mother. She still stands and fights for injustices to this day and plans to continue doing so.
