44,000 Black women raised $1.5 million for Kamala Harris in 3 hours on a Zoom call that crashed the online meeting platform
AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
- A Zoom event with 44,000 Black women supporting Kamala Harris reportedly raised $1.5 million.
- The organizer, Jotaka Eaddy, was dubbed the "Olivia Pope of Silicon Valley" by Forbes.
- Donations have surged since Joe Biden announced his exit from the race and endorsed Harris.
The #WinWithBlackWomen network, founded by organizer and strategist Jotaka Eaddy, hosted a Zoom call for Black women on Sunday that garnered 44,000 participants and raised over $1.5 million for Kamala Harris' newly launched presidential campaign, Bloomberg reported.
Eaddy, the CEO and founder of social-impact consulting firm Full Circle Strategies, is known as the "Olivia Pope of Silicon Valley," Forbes reported. She previously worked as a fintech executive at LendUp and a strategist at the NAACP.
Eaddy created #WinWithBlackWomen in 2020 as a network of Black women leaders in business, tech, politics, and entertainment, among other industries.
The 'biggest fundraising day' of 2024
Adam Glanzman/Getty Images for Paramount
The Zoom call for Harris featured speakers including Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio and Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, Bloomberg reported. Rep. Maxine Waters of California, who made history as the first woman and African-American chair of the House Financial Services Committee, also reportedly spoke at the event.
In just three hours, donations surpassed $1.5 million, #WinWithBlackWomen shared on Instagram.
Attendance peaked at 44,000 members, #WinWithBlackWomen said in an Instagram post. Skyrocketing attendance caused the Zoom meeting to crash as even more people attempted to join the event.
In a post on X, Eaddy thanked Zoom COO Aparna Bawa for helping "create the space for history." A marketing manager who wrote on X that she was on the call added that Bawa stepped in to allow the online meeting platform to accommodate tens of thousands of participants. Representatives for Zoom did not immediately respond to Business Insider's inquiry about Bawa's involvement in the event.
After President Joe Biden succumbed to pressure to bow out of the 2024 race and endorsed Harris as the new candidate, a surge of donations followed. In a post on X, ActBlue said that $46.7 million had been raised for Harris' campaign in the seven hours since it was announced — the biggest fundraising day of the 2024 election.