“Black-ish” star Yara Shahidi has ambitions that go way beyond television. How far beyond? Let’s just say the Harvard-bound 17-year-old knows off the top of her head what year she’ll qualify to run for U.S. president.
At TheWrap’s Power Women Breakfast in San Francisco on Thursday, TheWrap Editor-in-Chief Sharon Waxman asked featured speaker Shahidi whether she would ever consider running for office after the actress delivered a powerful speech about identity issues in America.
“Well, I qualify in 2035!” Shahidi said to cheers from the audience.
“For president… she’s not interested in the lower jobs!” Waxman responded.
As for her ambitions between graduating college and 2035, Shahidi offered: “Well, I describe what I want to do as being policy adjacent — I don’t know what that means as of yet, but I’m planning on double majoring in Social Studies… and African American studies. I know I want to be in D.C., I just don’t know where.”
Shahidi is finishing high school in two weeks with a stellar 5.0 GPA average, especially impressive given that she took all AP and honors classes while also, you know, starring in a hit TV show on ABC. Unsurprisingly, she got into the college of her choice.
“I committed to Harvard, which I’m really excited about,” Shahidi said. “It was a four-year campaign, emailing professors, since I was 13. I got into a lot of fantastic schools, I got into every school I applied to: Spelman, NYU, UCLA, Berkeley, Brown, Yale, Stanford and Harvard.”
It didn’t hurt that she included a letter of recommendation from former First Lady Michelle Obama in her application. (“She is very amazing and such a supporter, which is something very surreal to say,” Shahidi told W Magazine.)
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