Kimberly Peeler Allen is back with Mallory two years later in the MILK Studio. Kimberly has been working at the intersection of race, gender and politics for almost 20 years. She is the Co-founder of Higher Heights, a national organization building the political power and leadership of Black women from the voting booth to elected office.
Higher Heights has helped drive the national narrative about the power of Black women voters and has inspired countless Black women to step into their power whether it is as voters, activists or elected leaders.
Kimberly and her Co-Founder Glynda Carr built Higher Heights from an idea on the back of a placemat into a network of over 90,000 members, donors and activists across the country that have helped elect 10 Black women to Congress, 1 Black woman to the US Senate and grow the number of Black women in statewide executive office and leading our nation’s largest cities.
A highly skilled political fundraiser and event planner, Kimberly was the principal of Peeler-Allen Consulting, LLC from 2003 to 2014, the only African American full-time fundraising consulting firm in New York State. Kimberly served as finance director for Letitia James’ successful bid to become Public Advocate of the City of New York and the first African American woman elected citywide in New York’s history. Kimberly also served as the Co-Executive Director of New York Attorney General Letitia James' Transition Committee when she was elected to that office in November of 2018.
In 2018, Kimberly was selected as one of the Roddenberry Fellowship's 20 established and emerging activists to devote an entire year to projects that will make the U.S. more inclusive and equitable through their inaugural cohort.
Kimberly also serves as a board member of ERA Coalition and the Fund for Women's Equity. She is currently a visiting professor at the Center for American Women and Politics at Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.
She is drawing on her life experience as an organizer and operative to write her first book, Activist Momma, a celebration of this intersection and the gifts that mothers bring to movement work. It profiles the lives of a group of black women who are leading some of the most impactful movements at the local and national level.
Follow Kimberly on twitter @kimberp_a and @higherheights and @higherheightsPAC to support getting more Black women into elected office. You all better have voted in your state's primaries, or Kimberly will be very disappointed, and you don’t want that.