Maya Penn is the Gen Z award-winning founder and CEO of sustainable fashion brand Maya’s Ideas, keynote speaker, sustainability consultant, 3-time TED Speaker (all before the age of 13), artist, global climate activist, artist, animator, filmmaker, social entrepreneur, coder and Simon & Schuster author of You Got This. Maya is going to be in Vancouver next week getting ready for TED 2022 and she is one of this year’s TED Ambassadors training a new legion of speakers and is hosting TED’s Clubhouse show, “Green Now, Cool Tomorrow” as well as the L’Oréal Paris’ Clubhouse show as part of their Women of Worth program. Maya was recently invited to be on the Board of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s The Schwarzenegger Climate Initiative and attend this year’s Austrian World Summit.
Maya has received a commendation from President Barack Obama for outstanding achievement in environmental stewardship and was hand-picked by Oprah Winfrey as her youngest SuperSoul 100 entrepreneur, change maker, and thought leader. Maya has been awarded the 2016 Coretta Scott King A.N.G.E.L. Award, has been honored at the SCLC Drum Major for Justice Awards (test honorees include Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou, John Lewis and more), named as one of Teen Vogue’s “21 Under 21” in 2020, and awarded the Black Girls Rock M.A.D. Award. Maya 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 Penn TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/maya_penn_meet_a_young_entrepreneur_cartoonist_designer_activist?language=so
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, which Congress just passed last year.
Maya is the founder of the nonprofit organization 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 back.
At the age of 10, Maya was featured in Forbes magazine, 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. 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. Magic Johnson chose Maya to be featured in his 32 Under 32 series and she was also invited to meet and have a private roundtable discussion with Michelle Obama during the launch of her book Becoming. As a skilled public speaker and knowledgeable consultant on Gen Z marketing and Sustainability, Maya has spoken for IBM, Google, HYPEFEST, The Women President’s Organization (WPO), Verizon, Girls Inc., Fossil, Girl Scouts, The Live Justice Awards, and much more. She has vast professional experience doing keynotes, panels, hosting, remote talks, workshops, and more.
Without a doubt, Maya is leading the charge in sustainable fashion, Gen Z entrepreneurship and now the entertainment world through her animation work.
