Nicole Shanahan, former wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.‘s 2024 running mate, has pulled back the curtain on what she calls the “tech wife mafia.” It is a tight-knit circle of Silicon Valley spouses who wield enormous philanthropic influence while remaining largely disconnected from the communities they claim to serve.
In a revealing conversation on Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey, Shanahan described a world where progressive ideology, government ties, and vast wealth converge to create what she now believes is a system that perpetuates problems rather than solving them.
“These women are all very busy,” Shanahan explained. “They have multiple properties. They have tons of staff. Their kids are busy. A lot of them have relationship issues with their husbands. And a lot of them themselves are medicated on SSRIs and anti-depressants because it’s just overwhelming.”
Shanahan would know. For years, she was embedded in this world, funding criminal justice reform initiatives and progressive causes alongside wives of tech titans like Priscilla Chan (Mark Zuckerberg), Lauren Powell Jobs (Steve Jobs), and Mackenzie Scott (Jeff Bezos). She worked with figures like former San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón and poured resources into organizations promising to uplift marginalized communities.
But Shanahan’s political awakening began with a personal crisis: her daughter’s autism diagnosis at 18 months old, coinciding with COVID-19 lockdowns. As she dove into research, she encountered censored doctors, dismissed mothers, and a medical establishment unwilling to explore biomedical causes of autism—particularly potential connections to vaccines.
“The behaviorists have taken over the field of autism,” a neurologist told her. “Neurologists like me that try to get our work and voices out that there’s something biomedically going on with these kids, we are all censored.”
The irony wasn’t lost on Shanahan: she was married to the co-founder of Google, a company she now believes actively suppressed these very voices. The marriage eventually ended, with Shanahan embroiled in a custody battle over their daughter’s treatment.
As Shanahan pulled at the threads of autism research, she began questioning other progressive orthodoxies. She visited a maternity home in Texas and held a baby saved from abortion—an experience that shattered her absolutist pro-choice stance. “I realized I didn’t help a single mother keep her baby,” she reflected. “How dare I miss that in all of my philanthropic work?”
Her critique of the “tech wife mafia” extends beyond ideology to functionality. These women, she argues, fund NGOs that perpetuate problems to justify their own existence. “The NGO thrived,” Shanahan said of organizations she supported. “Did the communities thrive? No. The communities did not thrive.” The model, she contends, requires communities to remain in crisis to sustain fundraising—a racket disguised as compassion.
Shanahan also points to something more sinister: she believes progressive philanthropists were unknowingly laying groundwork for what World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab calls “the Great Reset.” Through networks connecting Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Davos, she argues, woke ideology was manufactured and exported globally, with China watching and exploiting the chaos.
Her journey culminated in a near-death experience last September when she suffered a devastating miscarriage at 20 weeks, losing over four liters of blood. The trauma brought her face-to-face with mortality—and with God.
Raised with belief but lacking relationship, Shanahan found herself drawn to Christianity through encounters with evangelical staff members on the RFK campaign. By January 2025, she was baptized, choosing that Sunday over attending President Trump’s inauguration.
Now, Shanahan is redirecting her efforts toward what she calls authentic community empowerment—supporting recalls when communities want them, exposing the dysfunction she once enabled, and speaking openly about her conversion to Christianity.
Her message to progressives trapped in the same cycle she escaped: “Your primary relationship should be between the individual and God. If there’s a way to contribute to communities in a way that the communities feel empowered—not what the NGO needs, but what do the people want—we will be able to solve all the problems in an authentic way.”