By Eden Garcia –
Nicole Shanahan snubbed Donald Trump.
Given a very exclusive invitation to Trump’s inauguration, the billionaire Democrat-turned-vaccine critic chose instead get baptized as a new Christian.
“All of the glitz and glamour of it was something very much that my old self would have been very drawn to,” says the Silicon Valley titan.
Because her daughter developed autism, Shanahan blamed vaccines. As someone who could attract campaign funds, she was selected by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be his vice president in his ill-fated 2024 presidential campaign.
Nicole Shanahan grew up in poverty in Oakland. Her mother was a nurse and her father was a computer specialist and an alcoholic.
She graduated from Santa Clara University School of Law in 2014 with an interest in patent law. Shanahan founded and led the Palo Alto-based legal tech company, ClearAccessIP until selling it to a competitor.
After divorcing San Francisco-based finance exec Jeremy Asher Kranz, she married Sergey Brin of Google fame and fortune. Their daughter, born in 2020, was diagnosed with autism, and Nicole looked for answers in the maverick medical sub-community that blames vaccines. She divorced Sergey in 2022.
Her journey to Christ started with a conversion to Judaism 10 years ago. Then she married Jacob Strumwasser, an advisor to the Bitcoin software company Lightning Labs, in a Druid ceremony. She became Christian late last year after she nearly died with a stillborn birth.
“The world that we are inhabiting right now is so full of pain and it’s good to know that you’re not alone, that Jesus’s blood was shed for us humans in this world of pure discord,” she says. “Our souls belong to him. God loves us so deeply that even in our moment of pain and death, we actually can know 100% without any doubt that we are in God’s kingdom.”
Nicole starting coming to Christ on the campaign trail with RFK Jr. Be exposed to the hard war of politics exposed weaknesses and vulnerabilities that she never knew she had when she was part of the Big Tech’s “mafia wives.”
“You are getting put through the fire,” she says. “Everyone’s looking at everything you do all the time.”
She drew strength from an advisor who was a born-again Christian, Zach Henry.
When she was progressive, she reserved born-again Christians for Dante’s inner circle of Hell. “White Christian evangelical nationalists were destroying America,” was the mantra of the progressives.
But now, it was one of those stereotypical evil people who brought a centering influence to the chaos and turmoil of a presidential bid.
He would quote scripture and remained calm always. “He was incredibly compassionate, so all my biases go out the window,” she explains.
Then, Shanahan got pregnant on the campaign trail. It wasn’t an easy one and ended in a stillbirth. Not only that, Shanahan lost 4 liters of blood and very nearly died at the Stanford Hospital.
After she woke up alive (with her uterus intact) in the hospital, she could breathe a sigh of relief. But she still had to go through the grief.
That’s when a friend started talking to her about Jesus. She started reading the Bible. After years of searching through New Age and Judaism, she found Jesus.
“It was like being wrapped in a warm cocoon while becoming a grounded, weighted, immovable obelisk,” she said.
