Caroline Heldman

Dr. Caroline Heldman is the Executive Director of The Representation Project and Chair of the Critical Theory and Social Justice department at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Her research specializes in media, the presidency, and systems of power. Dr. Heldman has published six books, including Protest Politics in the Marketplace: Consumer Activism in the Corporate Age (Cornell University Press, 2017), Women, Power, and Politics: The Fight for Gender Equality in the United States (Oxford University Press, 2017), and Madame President? Gender & Politics on the Road to the White House (Lynne Reinner, 2020).

Dr. Heldman has been active in “real world” politics as a professional pollster, campaign manager, and commentator for CNN International and Spectrum One. She has also been featured in the popular documentaries Miss Representation, The Mask You Live In, The Hunting Ground, Informant, Equal Means Equal, Liberated, Nevertheless, and The Great American Lie. She splits her time between Los Angeles and New Orleans, where she co-founded the New Orleans Women’s Shelter and the Lower Ninth Ward Living Museum. Dr. Heldman also co-founded End Rape on Campus (EROC), Faculty Against Rape (FAR), and End Rape Statute of Limitations (ERSOL). She is currently curating with the first Civil Rights museum in New Orleans with Miss Leona Tate, one of the four little girls who desegregated the Deep South in 1960. Dr. Heldman is also the national co-chair of #ERAnow, an organization dedicated to passing the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution.