Maya Penn is a 20 year old phenom, award-winning founder and CEO of eco-fashion brand Maya’s Ideas, keynote speaker, sustainability consultant, 3 time TED Speaker, artist, global activist, animator, filmmaker, social entrepreneur, coder and Simon & Schuster author. Maya has received a commendation from President Barack Obama for outstanding achievement in environmental stewardship. Maya was awarded the 2016 Coretta Scott King A.N.G.E.L. Award, as well as honored at the SCLC Drum Major for Justice Awards (test honorees include Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou, John Lewis and more). She has been hand chosen by Oprah Winfrey as her youngest Supersoul 100 entrepreneur, change maker, and thought leader. She has been one of the youngest leaders in sustainability and environmental justice for 12 years, starting at the age of just 8 years old.
Maya was featured in Forbes magazine at 10 years old, and has since been featured in Huffington Post, Business Insider, Entrepreneur Magazine, NPR, ESSENCE, The View, CNN, TIME, CBS This Morning with Gayle King, O Magazine, Ebony, The Steve Harvey Show, VICE, Wired, Adobe, and many more. In 2016 during the Obama Administration, Maya made history when she was commissioned to produce and animate the opening of the first ever digital report presented to Congress. The report was created to get an American Museum of Women’s History built in Washington. She has given 3 TEDTalks and her latest TEDWomen Talk has gone viral worldwide and is one of TED’s official top 15 TEDWomen Talks of all time. She is known as the youngest female to do two back-to-back official TEDTalks. Maya is the winner of the 2013 Black Enterprise Teenpreneur of The Year Award. Magic Johnson chose Maya to be featured in his 32 Under 32 series. Maya was invited to meet and have a private roundtable discussion with Michelle Obama during the launch of her book Becoming. Maya also founded a nonprofit organization called Maya’s Ideas 4 The Planet and started an ongoing project to give back to women and girls in Haiti, Senegal, Somalia, and more. Maya’s book You Got This (Published by Simon & Schuster) is being used in schools around the world as curriculum to teach youth social good driven entrepreneurship, creativity and giving.
