Official Trailer

The Story

About the Film

More than a decade after Miss Representation examined the ways mainstream media and popular culture have shaped and constrained women’s access to power, director Jennifer Siebel Newsom revisits that urgent inquiry in Miss Representation: Rise Up. Fifteen years later, the forces limiting women’s agency have not disappeared — they have evolved, intensified, and taken root in an increasingly volatile digital landscape. As AI, algorithms, and deepfake technologies reshape the media ecosystem, they are also enabling new forms of gender-based harassment and manipulation aimed at undermining and silencing women and girls.

Grounded in the experiences of a new generation, Miss Representation: Rise Up follows young women navigating this shifting terrain, weaving their personal stories together with insights from leaders across media, politics, culture, and academia. Together, they confront the forces working against women’s progress and imagine new pathways toward equity, agency, and power.

Directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Written and produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Camille Servan-Schreiber, and Gretchen Miller.

This film contains references to suicide. Viewer discretion is advised.

Director's Statement

When I premiered my first documentary, Miss Representation, 15 years ago, I had just given birth to my first child, a daughter. Miss Representation was inspired by my desire for young girls to grow up using their voices, realizing their power, and becoming leaders who could create necessary change in the world. With the global success of Miss Representation and the immense impact of The Representation Project, I was optimistic about the progress we were collectively making. In fact, we were seeing so much progress, I hoped The Representation Project wouldn’t need to exist 15 years later and that a sequel to Miss Representation  wouldn’t be necessary.

Unfortunately, amidst progress comes backlash. And, in this case, it is extreme. We are witnessing a new cultural backslide to women’s voices and power. With the online manosphere and the rollback of Roe v. Wade limiting women’s basic rights over their own bodies, the online backlash to women’s progress is occurring at an unprecedented rate and at scale. As the largest cultural communicator of our time, there is no doubt technology is being weaponized to silence women. We’re watching in real time as online harassment, cyberbullying, stalking, and threats of violence against women and girls bleed into grave consequences offline.

Enter AI. AI learns from the internet and social media — technology largely created by men — so it mirrors the most extreme and sexist parts of our culture. Is it any wonder 99% of AI deepfakes target women and girls and 96% of them are non-consensual pornography? The result is a downturn in women’s and girls’ mental health, safety, and leadership aspirations.

This should be considered a very real public health crisis.

I made Miss Representation and Miss Representation: Rise Up as a concerned parent who wants more for our world’s children. As a mother of four children — two daughters and two sons, I’ve seen this all firsthand. My eldest daughter is now almost an adult, and I’ve even seen her peers alter their bodies, succumb to eating disorders, and die by suicide because of these critically harmful aspects of technology.

But I’ve also experienced the harms of technology myself, as someone who uses my voice online and off. Whether via bots, political adversaries, or foreign governments committed to seeing our country struggle, I am one of many women who receive vile social media comments — some of which hope I get sexually assaulted, others which threaten my life and that of my family’s.

For me, documentaries are a narrative art form that entertains, educates, and inspires cultural and political change for the betterment of our children and future generations.

Please enjoy the young women in Miss Representation: Rise Up who are extraordinarily inspirational and the sage adults whose wisdom and expertise ground us in our reality and what is possible when we come together to alter the status quo. May this film inspire us all to use our voices, stand in our power, create meaningful change in tech, and turn the cultural tide towards gender equity for ALL. And, may we ALL Rise Up together.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom
Director, Writer, and Producer

About the Team

Jennifer Siebel Newsom
Jennifer Siebel Newsom
Director · Writer · Producer
About The Director

Jennifer Siebel Newsom is an award-winning filmmaker, influential thought leader on gender equality, and the First Partner of California. After graduating with honors from Stanford University and Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, she wrote, directed, and produced the award-winning documentary Miss Representation (2011) which explores the media’s misrepresentation of women and girls and the resulting underrepresentation of women in positions of power and influence in America. As a result of Miss Representation’s impact, she launched The Representation Project, a nonprofit organization that uses film, media, and education as catalysts for cultural transformation. Her second film as a director, The Mask You Live In (2015), explores the boy crises in America and how America’s narrow definition of masculinity is harming boys, men, and society at large. Her third film, The Great American Lie (2019), unveils how the US value system of money, power and control has glorified individualism, institutionalized inequality, and undermined the ability of most Americans to achieve the American Dream. Jennifer’s fourth film as a director Fair Play (2022) takes a deep look at domestic inequity, making visible the invisible care work historically held by women and illuminating the benefits to men and the family when they lean into more care at home. Jennifer’s upcoming film, Miss Representation: Rise Up exposes how technology is the newest backlash against girls and women’s mental health, agency, and political efficacy with misogyny and sexism on steroids. The film premiered at the 2026 Tribeca Festival. Jennifer also executive produced the Emmy Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering’s documentary The Invisible War (2012) and was an executive producer on the Emmy Award-winning documentary The Hunting Ground (2015) as well as On the Record (2020).

Jennifer’s films have been seen by tens of millions of people worldwide, and The Representation Project’s social action hashtag campaigns have reached nearly one billion people. The Representation Project is responsible for single-handedly shifting the norm of sexist Super Bowl ads with the #NotBuyingIt campaign. Similarly, their #AskHerMore campaign transformed sexist reporting on the red carpet, and empowered women in Hollywood to address inequalities in the industry, giving early momentum to the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.

Since becoming First Partner of California, Jennifer has championed various issues related to gender equity and raising healthy, whole children, launching the initiatives #EqualPayCA, California For All Kids, California for All Women, and California for All Communities. Jennifer lives in California with her husband, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and their four young children.

Camille Servan-Schreiber

Producer

Camille Servan-Schreiber is an award-winning documentary filmmaker known for producing compelling, thought-provoking films. Her work includes the Peabody Award-winning Eames: The Architect and the Painter, Land of Gold (Telluride, 2021), and 37 Words, a four-part series on Title IX for ESPN, Disney+, and Hulu. Her honors include the Golden Spire Award from the San Francisco Film Festival, a national Emmy nomination, and the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in France. She is co-founder of Bread and Butter Films.

Gretchen Miller

Producer

Gretchen Miller is a documentary film producer at The Representation Project. In partnership with Hello Sunshine, she produced Fair Play (2022), a documentary that highlights the invisible labor women historically shoulder, and champions a future where equality begins at home. Miss Representation: Rise Up is her second producer credit.

Featuring

Characters
Soraya Johnson

Soraya Johnson

Student

Soraya Johnson is a student at Stanford University studying Political Science and Economics. She serves as President of Stanford Women in National Security and has worked on gender equity initiatives through the California Partners Project and Stanford Cardinal Policy Group. Through partnerships with the U.S. State Department and the World Bank, her work has taken her to Ecuador, Singapore, Lebanon, and Washington, DC. She is interested in the intersection of global security, economic opportunity, and public policy.

Lea Williamson

Lea Williamson

Student

Lea E. Williamson is a storyteller, scholar and mentor raised between Nashville and the Bay Area. A Berkeley High School graduate and A Better Chance alumna, she served on the advisory board of the school’s International Baccalaureate program. She is a published author. Her writing appears in I Am the Legacy: Voices of a New Generation, an anthology by young writers of color from Cinnamongirl Inc.’s Write Your Story program. She also mentors and chaperones girls in Cinnamongirl’s Travelgirl program. That same program once took her to Japan.

Lea is a gifted public speaker who has taken the podium at The Commonwealth Club of California, among other stages. She has studied Mandarin for more than six years and done service work in Rome and Costa Rica. She is also a classically trained cellist and soprano. She hopes to build a career where diplomacy and storytelling meet, so that women and girls are seen for who they are.

Sabrina Javellana

Sabrina Javellana

South Florida Director

Sabrina Javellana is a seasoned public servant in local government, having served as Vice Mayor and City Commissioner of her hometown, Hallandale Beach, FL. She made history in 2018 as one of Florida’s youngest ever elected officials at the age of twenty-one while also being a full-time student at Florida International University in Miami.

As an outspoken public figure, the targeted online sexual violence began. Her haunting experiences with AI-generated, non-consensual, sexually explicit deepfake attacks have been detailed in the Associated Press, Miami Herald, and New York Times. Sabrina’s story has led to the passage of bipartisan state law for victims of rapidly growing tech-facilitated gender and sexual violence. Sharing her most vulnerable, dark experiences so publicly is challenging, yet Sabrina has found healing in advocacy. She dreams endlessly of a better future and a freer world for women and girls.

Allie Phillips

Allie Phillips

Candidate, Tennessee House of Representatives District 75

Allie Phillips is a 31-year-old Tennessee native, working mother, advocate, and Democratic candidate for Tennessee House District 75. A longtime advocate for working families and reproductive freedom, Allie first entered politics after experiencing firsthand the devastating consequences of Tennessee’s abortion ban.

In 2022, during a wanted pregnancy, Allie learned that her baby had a fatal fetal anomaly. Because Tennessee’s abortion ban prevented her from receiving the care she and her doctor determined was necessary, she was forced to travel out of state. Her experience became the catalyst for her advocacy, and she went on to share her story nationally, testify before the U.S. Senate, and participate in conversations about reproductive healthcare and the impact of abortion bans.

Since then, Allie has continued building a career rooted in advocacy and organizing. She currently serves as Communications Director for the Tennessee AFL-CIO, where she works to elevate the voices of working people, strengthen the labor movement, and advocate for policies that improve the lives of Tennessee families.

Allie previously ran for Tennessee House District 75 as a first-time candidate, earning more than 45% of the vote in a historically Republican district. She is running again in 2026 with a focus on making Tennessee more affordable for working families, strengthening public education, protecting access to healthcare, investing in infrastructure, and ensuring that working people have a voice in the decisions that affect their lives.

A mother of two, Allie understands the challenges facing Tennessee families not just as an advocate, but as a working parent herself. Her campaign is centered on a simple belief: Tennessee should work for the people who live and work here.

Experts
Hillary Rodham Clinton

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Former Secretary of State

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s lifelong passion encompassed public service for the needs of children and equal rights for all. In 1993, she became the first First Lady to hold a law degree. Hillary headed the President’s Task Force on Health Care Reform. Even though the effort failed, she continued to work on the issue, helping to establish the 1997 Children’s Health Insurance Program. Hillary broke new ground as the first First Lady to become a U.S. Senator, then to serve as Secretary of State. She ran for president twice, and in 2016, she became the first woman nominated by a major party as its presidential candidate and won the popular vote.

Jameela Jamil

Jameela Jamil

Actor & Activist

Jameela Jamil is an English actor, model, podcaster, and activist.

She started her career hosting music shows, talk shows, reality shows, and an advice show. She also wrote a column for the women’s monthly magazine Company from 2011 to 2014. In 2013, she became the first solo female host to the BBC Radio 1 Chart Show.

In 2016, Jamil left London and moved to Los Angeles to start a career as a screenwriter. Instead, she ended up auditioning for The Good Place and got the role of Tahani Al-Jamil. She has also voiced characters in the series DuckTails and the Disney series Mira, Royal Detective.

In 2020, Jamil launched a podcast called I Weigh with Jameela Jamil. The podcast discusses women’s accomplishments, body positivity, activism, and racial inclusion. She suffered from anorexia as a young woman and has been a very vocal opponent of diet culture, as well as the images that popular media feeds young women. She refuses to have her own images photoshopped and believes that photoshopped images should be clearly labeled as such.

Jamil was one of fifteen women selected to appear on the September 2019 cover of British Vogue. The issue was called “Forces of Change”, and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex guest edited it.

Nancy Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi

Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives

Nancy Pelosi served as the 52nd Speaker of the House of Representatives, having made history in 2007 when she was elected the first woman to serve as Speaker of the House. She made history again in January 2019 when she regained her position second in-line to the presidency – the first person to do so in more than six decades.

Pelosi is the chief architect of generation-defining legislation under two Democratic administrations, including the Affordable Care Act and the American Rescue Plan. She led House Democrats for 20 years and previously served as House Democratic Whip. In 2013, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Seneca Falls, the birthplace of the American women’s rights movement.

Pelosi has represented San Francisco in Congress for 36 years. Currently serving as Speaker Emerita of the House and as the Representative for California’s 11th Congressional District, she is fighting For The People to lower costs, grow paychecks and create jobs.

Under the Biden Administration, Speaker Pelosi led the design and passage of the lifesaving American Rescue Plan. This law turned the tide of the pandemic: vaccinating hundreds of millions of Americans, delivering direct assistance to families, creating millions of new jobs, supporting frontline workers and returning children safely to schools. Pelosi engineered passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to strengthen roads, bridges, ports, water systems and broadband access across the country. Under her leadership, the House paved the way for historic laws to lower health care costs and combat the climate crisis with the Inflation Reduction Act and reinvigorate American manufacturing and innovation with the CHIPS and Science Act.

During the Obama presidency, Speaker Pelosi orchestrated passage of the landmark Affordable Care Act: which has guaranteed protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions, forbid insurers from discriminating against women, ended annual and lifetime limits on coverage, and expanded affordable insurance to tens of millions more Americans. Pelosi also delivered the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to rescue the nation from the depths of the financial crisis; the Dodd-Frank reforms to rein in big banks and strengthen consumer protections; and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to restore the ability to fight pay discrimination in court.

A champion on climate, Pelosi has passed key investments in clean energy, conservation and community resilience. A defender of democracy, she has spearheaded House efforts to protect voting rights, to impeach President Trump for violating his oath of office, and to create the bipartisan Select Committee to Investigate January 6th. A force for full equality, she has led the fight to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” secure new protections against hate crimes and advance the watershed Equality Act. For decades, Pelosi has been a powerful voice for human rights in China and all around the world.

Additional key accomplishments signed into law during her four terms as Speaker include: landmark gun violence prevention measures; reform of the college financial aid system; expanding health care to eleven million American children; stronger ethics and transparency requirements in government; and more benefits for veterans and caregivers.

Pelosi comes from a strong family tradition of public service in Baltimore. Married to Paul Pelosi, she is a mother of five and grandmother of ten.

Frances Haugen

Frances Haugen

Facebook Whistleblower & Beyond the Screen Founder

Frances Haugen is an advocate for accountability & transparency in social media. Born in Iowa City, Iowa, Frances is the daughter of two professors and grew up attending the Iowa caucuses with her parents, instilling a strong sense of pride in democracy and responsibility for civic participation.

Frances holds a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Olin College and a MBA from Harvard University. She is a specialist in algorithmic product management, having worked on ranking algorithms at Google, Pinterest, Yelp and Facebook. In 2019, she was recruited to Facebook to be the lead Product Manager on the Civic Misinformation team, which dealt with issues related to democracy and misinformation, and later also worked on counter-espionage.

During her time at Facebook, Frances became increasingly alarmed by the choices the company makes prioritizing their own profits over public safety and putting people’s lives at risk. As a last resort and at great personal risk, Frances made the courageous decision to blow the whistle on Facebook. The initial reporting was done by the Wall Street Journal in what became known as “The Facebook Files”.

Since going public, Frances has testified in front of the US Congress, UK and EU Parliaments, the French Senate and National Assembly, and has engaged with lawmakers internationally on how to best address the negative externalities of social media platforms.

Frances has filed a series of complaints with the US Federal Government relating to Facebook (now named ‘Meta’) claiming that the company has been misleading the public and investors on how it handles issues such as climate change, misinformation, and hate speech, and the impact of its services on the mental health of children and young adults.

Frances fundamentally believes that the problems we are facing today with social media are solvable, and is dedicated to uniting people around the world to bring about change. We can have social media that brings out the best in humanity.

Dr. Safiya Noble

Dr. Safiya Noble

Professor, Director of the Center on Resilience & Digital Justice, UCLA

Dr. Safiya U. Noble is the David O. Sears Presidential Endowed Chair of Social Sciences and Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is the Director of the Center on Resilience & Digital Justice and Co-Director of the Minderoo Initiative on Tech & Power at UCLA. She currently serves as a Director of the UCLA DataX Initiative, leading work in critical data studies for the campus.

Professor Noble is the author of the best-selling book on algorithmic harm in commercial search engines, entitled Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (NYU Press), which has been widely-reviewed in scholarly and popular publications. In 2021, she was recognized as a MacArthur Foundation Fellow for her ground-breaking work on algorithmic discrimination.

Nina Jankowicz

Nina Jankowicz

Author, Counter-Disinformation Expert

Nina Jankowicz, the co-founder and CEO of The American Sunlight Project, is an internationally-recognized expert on disinformation and democratization, one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in AI, and the author of two books: How to Lose the Information War (2020), which The New Yorker called “a persuasive new book on disinformation as a geopolitical strategy,” and How to Be A Woman Online (2022), an examination of online abuse and disinformation and tips for fighting back, which Publishers Weekly named “essential.” Jankowicz has advised governments, international organizations, and tech companies, and testified before the US Congress, and the UK, Canadian, and European Parliaments.

Jim Steyer

Jim Steyer

CEO, Common Sense Media

James Steyer is founder and CEO of Common Sense Media, the leading national non-profit dedicated to helping kids, parents, and teachers thrive with media and technology. Since 2009, Common Sense Media has provided free educator resources to a growing network of K-12 schools nationwide including a comprehensive Digital Literacy and Citizenship curriculum, a 1-to-1 essentials program, and Graphite.org, a free online resource to help educators find the highest quality digital learning media.

Jim is a former elementary classroom teacher who currently teaches courses on civil rights, civil liberties, and children’s issues at Stanford University. He’s also co-chair of the Leading Education by Advancing Digital (LEAD) commission tasked with developing a blueprint detailing the opportunity for using technology as a catalyst to transform American education.

Lisa Ling

Lisa Ling

Broadcast Journalist

Award-winning journalist Lisa Ling is the host and executive producer of the CNN Original Series, “This is Life with Lisa Ling,” which is currently in its fifth season. In each episode, Ling immerses herself in communities across America giving viewers an inside look at some of the most unconventional segments of society. In 2017, the series won a Gracie Award.

Ling is also host of the CNN Digital series, “This is Sex with Lisa Ling,” which explores the taboos around sex in America and “This is Birth with Lisa Ling,” which explores how healthcare legislation, income inequality and cultural shifts shape how people have children in America.

Before coming to CNN, Ling was a field correspondent for “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and contributor to ABC News’ “Nightline” and National Geographic’s “Explorer.” She has reported from dozens of countries, covering stories about gang rape in the Congo, bride burning in India and the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, among other issues that are too often ignored.

Ling got her start in journalism as a correspondent for Channel One News where she covered the civil war in Afghanistan at 21 years of age. She later went on to become a co-host of ABC Daytime’s hit show “The View,” which won its first daytime Emmy during her time at the show. Ling has also served as a special correspondent for CNN’s “Planet in Peril” series and is a contributing editor for USA Today’s USA Weekend magazine. In 2011, her acclaimed documentary journalism series, “Our America with Lisa Ling,” began airing on OWN.

Ling is the co-author of “Mother, Daughter, Sister, Bride: Rituals of Womanhood” and “Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and the Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home,” which she penned with her sister, Laura.

In 2014, President Obama named Ling to the Commission on White House Fellows.

Gretchen Carlson

Gretchen Carlson

Broadcast Journalist

Gretchen is an American broadcaster and author, and co-founder of Lift Our Voices, a nonprofit organization fighting issues that keep toxic workplace issues silent. Much of her work since 2016 has a direct connection to her powerful contribution to the #MeToo movement. Originally from Minnesota, she was an honors student at Stanford, a violin prodigy, and also Miss America 1989. She has written two books, her memoir, Getting Real, and the New York Times bestseller Be Fierce: How to Stop Harassment and Take Your Power Back. She is married to sports agent Casey Close and they have two college-aged children, a boy, Christian, and a girl, Kaia. She lives in New York City.

Journalist, author, TED talk alum, and advocate Gretchen Carlson helped pave the way for #MeToo with her historic 2016 sexual harassment complaint against the chairman of Fox News Roger Ailes. Named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, and author of New York Times bestsellers Be Fierce and Getting Real, Carlson is one of America’s most successful news anchors and a globally recognized advocate for women’s empowerment.

Carlson previously hosted “The Real Story” on Fox News and co-hosted the number-one rated cable morning news show, “Fox and Friends,” for more than seven years. Carlson’s recently announced return to television, as host and producer of A+E and Lifetime Network documentaries, breaks the barriers and blacklisting she faced after saying “enough” to harassment. Her comeback is a beacon of hope for other brave women demoted, fired, or blacklisted from their chosen careers after reporting sexual harassment.

Carlson started her television career as a political reporter in Richmond, Virginia, and then served as an anchor and reporter in Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Dallas. In 2000 Carlson moved to national news as co-host and correspondent on CBS’ “The Saturday Early Show,” where she covered some of the world’s biggest stories, including the 9-11 terrorist attack from the World Trade Center, the Bush-Gore election, and Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh’s execution. She also reported and produced a 30-part series on domestic violence that won several national awards.

In 2016 Carlson became the face of workplace harassment survivors, gracing the covers of Time and Good Housekeeping magazines. Carlson’s book Be Fierce debuted in October 2017 and immediately joined Getting Real as a New York Times bestseller.

Since her harassment complaint became public, Carlson has worked fearlessly to change laws that protect predators. In December 2017, she joined a bi-partisan coalition of legislators to introduce the “Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Harassment Act,” which voids forced arbitration agreements that prevent sexual harassment survivors from getting their day in court. The bill was reintroduced in the House in February 2019.

Profits from Be Fierce go to Carlson’s Gift of Courage Fund, which supports organizations empowering women and young girls. This year the fund is providing free workshops to low-income women facing gender-based discrimination and violence through the Gretchen Carlson Leadership Initiative and supporting the March of Dimes’ Gretchen Carlson Advocacy Fellows.

Carlson’s advocacy has been honored by numerous organizations, including the New York Women in Communications’ Matrix Award; the Radio Television Digital News Association’s First Amendment Leadership Award; the National Organization for Women’s 2018 Women of Power and Influence Award; and the YWCA Greater Los Angeles’ 2018 Phenomenal Champion of Change.

Amy Klobuchar

Amy Klobuchar

US Senator

Amy Klobuchar is an American politician and attorney who made history in January 2007 by becoming the first woman to represent Minnesota in the United States Senate. A member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, Klobuchar gained national attention during her 2020 presidential campaign, although she ultimately withdrew from the race. Klobuchar has a strong educational background, having graduated as valedictorian from Wayzata High School, earning a political science degree from Yale University, and obtaining her Juris Doctor from the University of Chicago Law School.

Her political career began when she was elected Hennepin County attorney in 1998, where she served until her Senate election in 2006, winning by a significant margin. Throughout her Senate tenure, she has been recognized for her bipartisan approach, especially in areas like agriculture and veterans affairs. Klobuchar is known for her moderate views, advocating for gun control while supporting the hunting community, and holding relatively liberal stances on social issues, including women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights. Her personal life includes a marriage to John Bessler, with whom she has a daughter. Klobuchar is also an accomplished author, having published several books, including a memoir and works on antitrust law.

Reshma Saujani

Reshma Saujani

Founder, Girls Who Code & Moms First

Reshma Saujani is a leading activist, the founder of Girls Who Code, and the founder and CEO of Moms First (formerly Marshall Plan for Moms). She has spent more than a decade building movements to fight for women and girls’ economic empowerment, working to close the gender gap in the tech sector, and most recently fighting for the structural changes moms need and deserve including affordable child care, paid leave, and equal pay. She is a New York Times bestselling author of several books including PAY UP: The Future of Women and Work (And Why It’s Different Than You Think), Brave, Not Perfect, and the Girls Who Code book series. As a leading voice on women’s empowerment, her 2023 Smith College Commencement speech on imposter syndrome has more than 15 million views, and her influential TED talk, “Teach girls, bravery not perfection,” has more than 54 million views globally. Reshma began her career as an attorney and Democratic organizer. In 2010, she surged onto the political scene as the first Indian American woman to run for US Congress. Reshma lives in New York City with her husband, Nihal, and their sons, Shaan and Sai.

About The Representation Project

The Representation Project founded by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, uses storytelling, film, media, education, and advocacy to expose the injustices created by harmful gender stereotypes and shift people’s consciousness toward change. Through award-winning films, youth programs, educational curriculum, interactive campaigns, strategic partnerships, and social impact initiatives, TRP challenges the status quo and works to protect the mental health, safety, and power of women and girls while equipping young people with the knowledge and skills to fight sexism in a digitally shaped world. Ultimately, TRP’s work, built on the enduring power of film and continued education, aims to transform culture so that everyone, regardless of gender, race, class, age, sexual orientation, or circumstance, can fulfill their potential.

TheRepProject.org

About Abramorama

Abramorama, the theatrical releasing division of AB2 Media Group, is a preeminent global distribution and marketing partner for nonfiction, narrative, sports, science, and music films. Over the course of more than 25 years, Abramorama has distributed and marketed hundreds of films. Upcoming films include Alex Gibney’s Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie and Rory Kennedy’s The Trail of Alec Baldwin. Abramorama has continued its streak of successful releases, with titles including Never Stop Chasing, a Dolby Vision / Dolby Atmos profile of celebrity storm chaser Reed Timmer that landed a coveted release in AMC theaters nationwide during the ’26 summer blockbuster season; award-winning filmmaker Ivy Meeropol’s Ask E. Jean, held over at the IFC Center for 5 weeks; Billy Preston: That’s The Way God Planned It, which opened at Film Forum in February 2026 with the #1 per-screen average for the weekend; and the Robert Reich docu-portrait The Last Class, the #5 highest-grossing documentary of 2025, held over 12 weeks at the Quad in NYC due to popular demand, selling out screenings nationwide. Earlier this year the company partnered with Sobey Road Entertainment, National Geographic and Disney+ on the theatrical release of Werner Herzog’s Ghost Elephants, which launched with a coast-to-coast screening event and live Q&A simulcast to more than 115 theaters before streaming on Disney+ and Hulu. Other notable releases include 2DIE4, the company’s first IMAX exclusive feature, as well as Benjamin Flaherty’s Shuffle and Alexis Lloyd’s Group — both New York Times Critics’ Picks — and Steve Schapiro: Being Everywhere, the documentary on the legendary photojournalist executive produced by Michael Rosenberg, Sid Ganis, and Rob Friedman. AB2mediagroup.com
Miss Representation:
Rise Up
A Film by Jennifer Siebel Newsom / 2026
© 2026 The Representation Project