11 Facts About Deja Foxx, the Activist Who Might Just Be Our Future President

Deja was not just the youngest at Kamala's HQ, she was also the youngest across all the campaigns! At just 19, Deja was the Influencer and Surrogate Strategist for Kamala Harris For The People. She was offered the job after asking Vice President Harris to be her Future Global Leaders Fellowship mentor. Spoiler alert: she got not only a mentor, but a job too!

The same day a controversial law Senator Jeff Flake voted in favor of was passed, a 16-year-old Deja attended his town hall meeting to speak her mind. The law, House Joint Resolution 43, lets states withhold federal Title X funding from Planned Parenthood. Deja passionately questioned why, as a privileged middle-aged white man, it was the Republican Arizona Senator's "right" to take away "her right to choose Planned Parenthood." YES, Deja!

In Vice's Conservatives and Progressives Debate Feminism panel, a conservative panelist defended voting for Trump in 2016, saying that part of it was "kind of a joke." Deja boldly responded with, "I want to speak to the privilege that that holds for that election to be a joke for you." And Deja is absolutely right. When so much was at stake during both the 2016 and 2020 elections due to the racist former president, many people's lives — especially the lives of people of color — actually depended on it.

Deja shared on her website that she experienced homelessness at 15 years old and grew up on food stamps, which made her realize how policies surrounding reproductive rights and her school's sex education system disadvantaged her. This motivated her to organize a Sex Education Curriculum Review Board for the Tucson Unified School District in her hometown. She encourages young people getting into politics to consider what issues are impacting them personally, how they can use their personal experiences to guide their efforts, and who is in their personal network that they can tap for help.

Deja shared on Instagram that she has struggled to see her intersecting identities represented in both the media and her "own construction of what it meant to be AAPI." She says that she's still working on it and "finding ways to exist outside of boxes and be true to my lived experience while honoring my heritage," and reminds anyone who feels similarly that they are not alone.

She told Rolling Stone, "I make it a part of my activism to post up in my bikini on Instagram and with a vibrator, because why not? Because I want to show up as the most whole and authentic version of myself, because at the end of the day, I am going to be president and I expect to be a representative of people." She refuses to be confined to one idea of who she should be, and encourages others to do the same, adding, "You can post up with vibrators and you can work on a presidential campaign and you can be the whole and authentic version of yourself."

Deja was given Planned Parenthood's Catalyst For Change Award for her advocacy for sex education and reproductive rights. She has also received several other honors, including being named a Teen Vogue 21 Under 21 person to watch and being listed on the Dazed 100.

She told yahoo.com that she "wanted to be President in third grade, but it wasn't until college when I felt like I could say it out loud." And we can't wait to watch her get there!

Deja is on a full ride to Columbia University *and* made the Dean's List. She took time off to work for Vice President Kamala Harris' 2020 Presidential campaign, but has since returned to school.

For Deja's 21st birthday, she asked supporters to donate to Youth on Their Own, a program that supports the success of youth experiencing homelessness. She reminded followers that "your future president, youngest campaign staffer, Founder, or Ivy League student could be the same person hustling for minimum wage at the gas station right now" - and it is essential to invest in their potential.

While Deja showed off a temporary tattoo as part of a collaboration with Ink Box on her Instagram that read, "They say you can't be what you can't see. I dare to see it in myself," she also has some real ink. "I have a tattoo of fearless on my arm in Kamala Harris's handwriting dedicated to my time on the campaign," she told POPSUGAR, adding that her desk was under the wall that was painted with the word "fearless."