California First Partner and documentary filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s time in state office with Gov. Gavin Newsom concludes in January 2027, when the latter’s final term ends after eight years. The former Newsom said she looks back with pride about not standing down on pay equity and other issues that plague women, despite the flack she’s collected along the way.
“I’m particularly proud of the work that we’ve done in terms of women’s wealth and closing the women’s wealth gap,” Siebel Newsom said Tuesday at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Santa Barbara, Calif., in conversation with Ellie Austin, the host of Fortune Daily and editorial director of Most Powerful Women.
Asked what metrics she wanted her legacy as first partner to be judged on, Siebel Newsom started with pay. California has “the strongest equal pay laws in the nation,” she said, and “hundreds of companies have signed on to our equal pay pledge.” She launched #EqualPayCA, a statewide campaign aimed at closing the gender pay gap, in 2019.
“But that wasn’t enough, which is why we turned to women’s wealth,” she said.
Siebel Newsom pointed to the financial literacy requirement in California high schools beginning with the 2030-31 graduating class. She also cited CalKids, a savings program she said was launched before Trump Accounts to incentivize families to invest in their children’s futures. She also highlighted expanded access to capital for female entrepreneurs and broader access to the her husband himself, an issue she notice early on that prompted her to work on making those circles bigger.
For Siebel Newsom, the case is economic.
“Women anchor families, communities, and now, as you all know, the economy,” Siebel Newsom said. “One of the reasons we’ve really invested in California for all women … is because we know that if women are not able to thrive, how can their families, their communities, and the economy thrive?”
That focus on families runs through her other work. She said investments in universal pre-K, after-school programs, summer school and school meals were meant “to mitigate costs and stress to families in California,” and have saved them thousands of dollars per year.
“[I’m a] first partner because I wanted to be a partner to California’s women, children, and families,” she said. Siebel Newsom took the title “first partner” instead of “first lady” to signal inclusivity, recognizing California will one day have a woman or LGBTQ+ governor, and to emphasize the value of partnership in government, according to the governor’s office.
She’s also made an effort to change who gets heard in state government by launching California’s Women’s Wealth Advisory Council.
“I was tired of going into rooms where the majority of the men with access, the majority of the people with access to my husband were men, and a few women,” she said. “I wanted to expand exposure to government.”
A graduate of Stanford University and Stanford’s business school, Siebel Newsom is a documentary filmmaker whose work includes Miss Representation, The Mask You Live In and The Great American Lie.
Her latest film, Miss Representation: Rise Up, expands on the original by looking at the backlash against women’s progress and technology used to harass and silence women. It premiered at the Tribeca Festival in June. She said it will premiere in New York City on Oct. 22. She and the governor have four children.