Jim Steyer
Encyclopedia
James P. Steyer (born 1956) is an American
child advocate, civil rights attorney, professor and author. He is most known for founding Common Sense Media, a non-partisan organization dedicated to improving media and entertainment choices for kids and families.
Prior to launching Common Sense Media, Steyer founded and served as Chairman and CEO of JP Kids, an educational media
company for children. Steyer also founded and served as President of Children Now, a national child advocacy and media organization.
Steyer has been teaching courses at Stanford University
in political science, education, civil rights
and civil liberties
for 25 years. He also authored the book, The Other Parent: The Inside Story of the Media’s Effect on our Children, which focuses on the effects certain media and government regulators have on children. Steyer hosts a weekly television segment called "Kids and the Media" on CBS-5 TV in San Francisco.
In 2011, the New York Times reported that Steyer was helping build the Center for the Next Generation, a nonprofit that aims to influence public policy
debates focused on national children’s and energy
issues.
schoolteacher who would sometimes bring him to class as her teaching assistant. In an article in the Los Angeles Times
, Steyer’s college friend, Mike Tollin, said "[Jim’s] whole focus on kids comes from his close relationship with his mother…She was the kind of woman who would sit you down, ask you how things were, and you felt like you needed to tell her the truth."
Steyer graduated early from Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire
and worked with his mother teaching remedial reading at a public school
in Harlem
.
Steyer later graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University
where he was awarded the Lindsey Peters Award for Outstanding Work in American Government. After two years of community development work in Asia, he attended Stanford Law School and graduated in 1983. During law school, Steyer founded the East Palo Alto Community Law Project, a non-profit legal services center for low-income families in East Palo Alto, California.
After Stanford, he became a law clerk for Justice Allen Broussard of the California Supreme Court. He then served as a civil rights attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. There, he helped spearhead the Poverty and Justice Program, focused on developing national legal and legislative strategies on behalf of disadvantaged African Americans.
, focuses on the effects that media and technology have on young users. Steyer describes the group as “nutritional labeling of media." The leading national media advocacy group is financed by donations from foundations and individuals and fees from media partners. Common Sense Media distributes its content to more than 90 million US homes via partnerships with Comcast
, Time Warner Cable, DIRECTV, NBC Universal
, Netflix
, Best Buy
, Google
, Yahoo!, AOL/Huffington Post, Fandango, Trend Micro, Verizon Foundation, Nickelodeon
, and more.
Steyer’s advocacy has reached tens of millions of parents a month in articles, reviews and advice columns. Common Sense Media helps parents and their children to identify content that could be harmful to a younger audience. There are more than 600,000 members participating in the discussions and community, and their education programs for students and parents are in use in more than 20,000 schools across the U.S. Common Sense Media played a major role in the passage of the 2005 California
law restricting the sale of violent video games. The California Supreme Court recently struck down the ban.
Common Sense Media's 21-member board includes Chelsea Clinton
; James Coulter, founder and CEO of TPG; Gene T. Sykes, head of Goldman Sachs
Group Inc.'s technology, media and entertainment investment banking group; former Federal Communications Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate, and John H.N. Fisher, managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson
, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. It previously included Hon. Julius Genachowski, Bill Kennard and George Roberts.
groups that fought for the three-hour-a-week educational children's programming quota
which eventually became law. The group also became well known for publishing a “report card” on California’s children. This report card helped to shed light on important statistics. One of the red flags the report card raised was that one-fifth of California children lacked health insurance and only half were immunized.
," which aired on the Disney Channel
. Steyer served as the company’s Chairman and CEO.
Under Steyer’s guidance, the company used various platforms to broadcast
more educational and entertaining content. JP Kids also provided an online outlet for teens to share opinions, explore alternative points of views and discuss political and environmental topics.
Among other honors, Mr. Steyer has been awarded the university's highest teaching honor - the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching – awarded annually to three Stanford professors. Stanford students also voted for him to be Class Day speaker during Stanford’s graduation exercises.
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
child advocate, civil rights attorney, professor and author. He is most known for founding Common Sense Media, a non-partisan organization dedicated to improving media and entertainment choices for kids and families.
Prior to launching Common Sense Media, Steyer founded and served as Chairman and CEO of JP Kids, an educational media
Media
Media may refer to:- Communications :* Media , tools used to store and deliver information or data** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising...
company for children. Steyer also founded and served as President of Children Now, a national child advocacy and media organization.
Steyer has been teaching courses at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
in political science, education, civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
and civil liberties
Civil liberties
Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom from slavery and forced labour, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one's self, the right to own and bear arms, the right...
for 25 years. He also authored the book, The Other Parent: The Inside Story of the Media’s Effect on our Children, which focuses on the effects certain media and government regulators have on children. Steyer hosts a weekly television segment called "Kids and the Media" on CBS-5 TV in San Francisco.
In 2011, the New York Times reported that Steyer was helping build the Center for the Next Generation, a nonprofit that aims to influence public policy
Public policy
Public policy as government action is generally the principled guide to action taken by the administrative or executive branches of the state with regard to a class of issues in a manner consistent with law and institutional customs. In general, the foundation is the pertinent national and...
debates focused on national children’s and energy
Energy
In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...
issues.
Early life and career
Steyer was born in New York City in 1956. Steyer was highly influenced by his mother, Marnie Steyer, a New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
schoolteacher who would sometimes bring him to class as her teaching assistant. In an article in the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, Steyer’s college friend, Mike Tollin, said "[Jim’s] whole focus on kids comes from his close relationship with his mother…She was the kind of woman who would sit you down, ask you how things were, and you felt like you needed to tell her the truth."
Steyer graduated early from Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
and worked with his mother teaching remedial reading at a public school
Public school
Public school may refer to:*State school in Australia, Canada, Scotland, and the United States, a school funded with tax revenue and administered by a government or governmental agency...
in Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
.
Steyer later graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
where he was awarded the Lindsey Peters Award for Outstanding Work in American Government. After two years of community development work in Asia, he attended Stanford Law School and graduated in 1983. During law school, Steyer founded the East Palo Alto Community Law Project, a non-profit legal services center for low-income families in East Palo Alto, California.
After Stanford, he became a law clerk for Justice Allen Broussard of the California Supreme Court. He then served as a civil rights attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. There, he helped spearhead the Poverty and Justice Program, focused on developing national legal and legislative strategies on behalf of disadvantaged African Americans.
Common Sense Media
Steyer’s nonprofit organization, Common Sense MediaCommon Sense Media
Common Sense Media , commonly known as CSM, is a San Francisco-based non-profit organization which serves as a guide for parents that has reviews for most media types, including books, movies, video games, music, and websites, and rates them in terms of violence, sex, and profanity. The website...
, focuses on the effects that media and technology have on young users. Steyer describes the group as “nutritional labeling of media." The leading national media advocacy group is financed by donations from foundations and individuals and fees from media partners. Common Sense Media distributes its content to more than 90 million US homes via partnerships with Comcast
Comcast
Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...
, Time Warner Cable, DIRECTV, NBC Universal
NBC Universal
NBCUniversal Media, LLC is a media and entertainment company engaged in the production and marketing of entertainment, news, and information products and services to a global customer base...
, Netflix
Netflix
Netflix, Inc., is an American provider of on-demand internet streaming media in the United States, Canada, and Latin America and flat rate DVD-by-mail in the United States. The company was established in 1997 and is headquartered in Los Gatos, California...
, Best Buy
Best Buy
Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American specialty retailer of consumer electronics in the United States, accounting for 19% of the market. It also operates in Mexico, Canada & China. The company's subsidiaries include Geek Squad, CinemaNow, Magnolia Audio Video, Pacific Sales, and, in Canada operates...
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
, Yahoo!, AOL/Huffington Post, Fandango, Trend Micro, Verizon Foundation, Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon is a US cable TV channel.Nickelodeon may also refer to:-In television:*Spinoffs of the Nickelodeon channel:** Nickelodeon Magazine, a children's magazine.** Nickelodeon Universe, an amusement park....
, and more.
Steyer’s advocacy has reached tens of millions of parents a month in articles, reviews and advice columns. Common Sense Media helps parents and their children to identify content that could be harmful to a younger audience. There are more than 600,000 members participating in the discussions and community, and their education programs for students and parents are in use in more than 20,000 schools across the U.S. Common Sense Media played a major role in the passage of the 2005 California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
law restricting the sale of violent video games. The California Supreme Court recently struck down the ban.
Common Sense Media's 21-member board includes Chelsea Clinton
Chelsea Clinton
Chelsea Victoria Clinton is a television journalist, currently serving as Special Correspondent for NBC News, and philanthropist, working through the Clinton Global Initiative. She is the only child of former U.S...
; James Coulter, founder and CEO of TPG; Gene T. Sykes, head of Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is an American multinational bulge bracket investment banking and securities firm that engages in global investment banking, securities, investment management, and other financial services primarily with institutional clients...
Group Inc.'s technology, media and entertainment investment banking group; former Federal Communications Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate, and John H.N. Fisher, managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Draper Fisher Jurvetson is a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California with affiliate offices in more than 30 cities around the world and over $7 billion in capital commitments....
, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. It previously included Hon. Julius Genachowski, Bill Kennard and George Roberts.
Children Now
Steyer founded his first child advocacy venture, Children Now, in 1988. Children Now was one of the main lobbyingLobbying
Lobbying is the act of attempting to influence decisions made by officials in the government, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies. Lobbying is done by various people or groups, from private-sector individuals or corporations, fellow legislators or government officials, or...
groups that fought for the three-hour-a-week educational children's programming quota
Quota
-Commerce:* Import quota, a type of trade restriction* Production quota* Sales quota, a minimum sales goal for a set time span* Tariff-rate quota, a type of trade restriction-Electoral systems:* Droop quota* Election threshold* Hagenbach-Bischoff quota...
which eventually became law. The group also became well known for publishing a “report card” on California’s children. This report card helped to shed light on important statistics. One of the red flags the report card raised was that one-fifth of California children lacked health insurance and only half were immunized.
JP Kids
Shortly after starting Children Now, Steyer noticed a serious need for high-quality educational TV programs for kids. In response he started JP Kids in 1996, a for-profit company that produced such shows as "The Famous Jett JacksonThe Famous Jett Jackson
The Famous Jett Jackson is a joint Canadian and American Disney Channel Original Series coming-of-age television series for children ages 12–16 about a boy named Jett Jackson who plays a teenage secret-agent on a fictional TV show-within-a-show called Silverstone...
," which aired on the Disney Channel
Disney Channel
Disney Channel is an American basic cable and satellite television network, owned by the Disney-ABC Television Group division of The Walt Disney Company. It is under the direction of Disney-ABC Television Group President Anne Sweeney. The channel's headquarters is located on West Alameda Ave. in...
. Steyer served as the company’s Chairman and CEO.
Under Steyer’s guidance, the company used various platforms to broadcast
Broadcast
Broadcast or Broadcasting may refer to:* Broadcasting, the transmission of audio and video signals* Broadcast, an individual television program or radio program* Broadcast , an English electronic music band...
more educational and entertaining content. JP Kids also provided an online outlet for teens to share opinions, explore alternative points of views and discuss political and environmental topics.
Stanford University
Mr. Steyer is also a faculty member at Stanford University where he has taught popular courses for 25 years. He is a Consulting Professor in the Department of Political Science and a Lecturer in the School of Education and the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, teaching a variety of courses on education, civil rights and civil liberty issues. His current lecture class is entitled, “Justice at Home and Abroad.”Among other honors, Mr. Steyer has been awarded the university's highest teaching honor - the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching – awarded annually to three Stanford professors. Stanford students also voted for him to be Class Day speaker during Stanford’s graduation exercises.
Works
Mr. Steyer is also a nationally known author, having written the book, The Other Parent: The Inside Story of the Media’s Effect on our Children. According to Stanford Magazine, the book “paints a frightening picture of greedy media companies, indifferent government regulators and parents too overwhelmed to pay attention.”Board positions
Mr. Steyer has served on numerous non-profit boards including Children Now, the National Parenting Association and the San Francisco Free Clinic.Personal life
Steyer currently lives in San Francisco with his wife and their four children. His brother is hedge fund manager and philanthropist Tom SteyerTom Steyer
Thomas "Tom" Fahr Steyer is an American asset manager, philanthropist and environmentalist.He is the founder and Co-Senior Managing Partner of Farallon Capital Management, LLC and the co-founder of the OneCalifornia Bank, an Oakland-based community development bank...
.