I went to an all-girls school, and saw my very empowered, passionate mother going to work. In a way, I've been in the “women’s empowerment space” my whole life. My reporting, my advocacy, my activism, my storytelling, my political training, my political wherewithal. It’s the right issue hitting the right president at the right moment, but it’s been a culmination of my lifetime of work. You’ve done so much for women at every phase of your life.

Shriver attends a Women’s History Month event at the White House in March 2024. “I want to focus on humanity, and I want to level the playing field when it comes to research.”īelow, she discusses her Kennedy upbringing, a recent career resurgence, and why she’s “a doctor’s worst nightmare.” I don’t think you do one at the expense of another,” says Shriver, who shares four kids and two grandchildren with ex-husband Arnold Schwarzenegger. “Look, I’m a mother of two young men, so it’s not that I just want to focus on women. While it still requires additional congressional funding, the intention of the effort is to balance the scales of medical science, since many of the diseases that predominantly impact women, and the majority of medications taken by everyone, have only been studied in men.

Life is a marathon, and going slowly through it is a gift.Īfter decades of putting others first, she’s now throwing her considerable clout behind a White House initiative that aims to pour $12 billion into women’s health research. Going slowly doesn’t mean you won’t be able to achieve what you want. But when she became first lady of California at age 48, she reluctantly agreed to take an extended leave of absence from NBC to avoid speculation about a potential conflict of interest. So she did, becoming an Emmy- and Peabody-award-winning reporter, special anchor for NBC News, and a bestselling author several times over. “I was raised by a woman who wanted to empower me, in a field of all men - starting with my home, I had four brothers - to go out and tackle the world,” Shriver, who’s 68, tells Bustle. Her mother founded the Special Olympics her father, Robert “Sargent” Shriver, was a vice presidential nominee and U.S. Kennedy, who’d just signed a bill supporting children and mental health into law.īut then again, Shriver is accustomed to being an eyewitness to history. It was a goosebumps-inducing moment, in part because it closely echoed a similar occasion from 1963, when Shriver’s mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, was handed a pen by her brother, President John F. As a result, she founded the Women's Alzheimer's Movement and has been active in supporting the cause in the years since. And while all of this is impressive in itself, there is another reason Shriver is famous: She is a member of the infamous Kennedy family.Last month, Maria Shriver stood in the Oval Office and accepted a pen from President Biden, which he’d just used to sign an executive order to invest in women’s health research. One of the books that is closest to her heart is titled 'What's Happening To Grandpa,' which is aimed at helping kids understand the effects of Alzheimer's disease, which Shriver's own father was diagnosed with in 2003. Since 1999, she has also authored seven books for children and adults. She started her on-screen work as a national news correspondent for CBS in 1983 before moving on to become an anchor for 'CBS Morning News.' After that, she worked for NBC News, then 'The Today Show,' and later 'Dateline.' Though she stepped away from her journalism career after becoming First Lady of California to prevent a conflict of interest, she made a comeback in 2013, joining NBC again.

Since 1983, her face has been synonymous with TV news. You may also recognize Maria Shriver for her career as a television journalist.

Young maria shriver bikini