Nika Soon-Shiong (born February 26, 1993) is the daughter of Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a South African billionaire.[1] She served as a Public Safety Commissioner of West Hollywood from September 13, 2021, to October 11, 2022. She is the founder and Executive Director of the Fund for Guaranteed Income (F4GI), and was also part of the Compton Pledge and Long Beach Pledge guaranteed income programs.[2][3]
Nika Soon-Shiong | |
|---|---|
 Soon-Shiong in 2022 | |
| Public Safety Commissioner of West Hollywood | |
| In office September 13, 2021 – October 11, 2022 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | February 26, 1993 |
| Parent(s) | Patrick Soon-Shiong (father) Michele B. Chan (mother) |
| Alma mater | Stanford University (MA, BA) University of Oxford (PhD, attending) |
Early life and career
Soon-Shiong was born on February 26, 1993, to Patrick Soon-Shiong and Michele B. Chan; she has a brother.[4] She graduated from Marymount High School in 2011.[5] In 2015, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with an Master's in African Studies, Bachelor's in International Relations, and is a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford.[6]
Career
After graduation, Soon-Shiong worked for a few years at Equal Education, an activist movement in South Africa, before moving to work in the office of the President of the World Bank Group, focusing on technology and development (especially Benin) and where she continues to be associated as a consultant. In 2019, she started her PhD degree at the University of Oxford.[7]
In August 2020, Soon-Shiong founded the non-profit organisation 'Fund for Guaranteed Income' (F4GI) and became the co-director of the 'Compton Pledge', an initiative by F4GI to trial a guaranteed income program in Compton, California.[8][9] The organisation later expanded to Long Beach, California forming the 'Long Beach Pledge', and is now running 7 such initiatives.
Soon-Shiong has been involved in news media, especially the Los Angeles Times since June 2020 (her father purchased the paper in 2018), when she criticized the Times for their use of the term "looting" in their headlines during the George Floyd protests and subsequent riots. The next month, when there were fears of layoffs, Soon-Shiong urged her father to meet with Black and Latino employees; the layoffs didn't go through[citation needed]. In February 2021, when the Wall Street Journal speculated that Patrick Soon-Shiong was looking to sell the Los Angeles Times, Soon-Shiong responded stating that they were "100% wrong".[10][11] On June 25, 2021, it was announced that Soon-Shiong joined the Committee to Protect Journalists's board of directors.[12] She is also on the boards of One Fair Wage and the Compton Development Corporation.
On September 13, 2021, Soon-Shiong was appointed to the Public Safety Commission by West Hollywood council member Lindsey Horvath. As a commissioner representing concerns of the citizens, she questioned policing in the city.[13][14] Soon-Shiong was met with backlash for this, with Horvath responding to the backlash against Soon-Shiong saying it was "rooted in racism".[15] In June 2022, the West Hollywood City Council voted to reduce the number of sheriffs in the city and replace them with unarmed security guards, a move which Soon-Shiong called "pragmatic and fiscally responsible," but said it "could have gone further."[16]
In July 2022, Soon-Shiong announced that she would be stepping down from her role as a Public Safety Commissioner in August 2022 to continue her studies at the University of Oxford where she had been remotely enrolled during the COVID-19 pandemic.[17][18]
Publications
- Soon-Shiong, Nika (2020) 'Public Procurement and Implementing Agents: The Middlemen in Charge of School Infrastructure Delivery in the Eastern Cape of South Africa'. Chapter 11: Public Procurement Regulation in Africa
- Soon-Shiong, Nika (2020) 'Using digital technologies to re-imagine cash transfers during the Covid-19 crisis', Digital Pathways Paper Series Pathways to Prosperity Commission.
- Soon-Shiong, Nika (2022) Enough Audits. Contract Cities Are Paying More for Less LASD Service. The Knock.
- Soon-Shiong, Nika (2022) LASD-Run Inmate Welfare Fund: Another Black Hole of Taxpayer Dollars The Knock.