Priscilla Chan, wearing Bottega Veneta to the inauguration, in line with Mark Zuckerberg and the Trump World Order
In recent months, Mark Zuckerberg used his role as CEO of Meta to announce a kind of cultural reset within his company and across the platforms it owns, starting with a warm congratulations to the Chairman Donald Trump after he wins election in 2024. Earlier this month, he sat alone in videos sharing a series of new policies, including ending DEI programs, changes to policies. rules protecting LGBTQ+ usersand ending fact-checking programs aimed at preventing misinformation. The seemingly sudden change in the CEO’s beliefs and appearance makes viewers wonder who the hell Zuckerberg’s wife of 12 years is? Priscilla Chan, thinking about how things are going. Although Chan has no official relationship with the social media platform, even her Instagram comments are not immune to backlash. “No one will blame you if you get divorced,” one person commented on a photo of the couple’s Halloween costumes. (Zuck is John Wick, Chan is a ballerina.) “Please, help Mark come to his senses,” read another.
According to reports, the name of Chan did not appear about an invitation to a pre-inauguration reception that Zuckerberg hosted with the major Republican donor Miriam Adelson (who contributed to Trump’s legal defense fund for aides in the Mueller investigation). But on Monday, the pediatrician turned philanthropist stood beside her husband during the ceremonies, wearing a sky blue fuzzy sweater by Bottega Veneta and two demure strands of pearls. The couple is seated next to each other Jeff Bezos, his fiancée Lauren Sánchez, And Elon Musk in a position of honor, lined up in front of members of the new Trump administration and other high-ranking Republicans, all of whom represent the neo-MAGA aristocracy. (Chan representatives at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative did not respond Vanity fairrequest comment.)
Chan seemed to be enjoying himself during the inauguration, and she was discovered in conversation with the new secretary of state sworn in Marco Rubio. Still, it’s hard to imagine that the mother of three and former elementary science teacher quoted Dr. Seuss in her high school valedictorian speech—will have a great time hanging out with the UFC CEO White Dana And Kid Rock. Zuckerberg claims his marriage has only improved since he went through his infamous two-year evolution, which began with jiujitsu training and culminated with longer curls.
In a three-hour interview with an anti-woke interlocutor Joe Rogan Earlier this month, Zuckerberg objected Joe Bidenhis administration over concerns about COVID-19 misinformation—and discussed his wife. When Zuckerberg tore his ACL during a workout in November 2023, he was concerned that Chan might be upset with him. Instead, she just wanted him back in the octagon. “She said, ‘No. You heal your ACL. When you heal, it’s best to get back to fighting,'” Zuckerberg said. “She said, ‘You feel so much better to be around while you’re doing this. You have to fight.’”
Chan and Zuckerberg first met as Harvard students in 2003, when she was a freshman studying biology and he was a sophomore taking a computer science class. As Facebook grew from a dorm room project into a real company, he dropped out but she stayed, graduating in 2007 and going on to medical school at the University of California, San Francisco. They got married in 2012, shortly after Facebook High capacity IPO and right before Chan started his pediatrics internship. She ended it in 2015, around the time the couple announced Chan was pregnant with their first child.
For more than a decade, Chan has seemingly always accompanied her husband in his public priorities. In December 2015, coincidentally with their daughter maximumAfter the birth, the couple launched the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The organization aims to “solve society’s toughest challenges” and its initial investments are in education and biomedical science. Chan and Zuckerberg are co-CEOs of the initiative, which has more than 500 employees, but Chan runs the day-to-day operations. Initially, the couple was generally liberal in their charitable choices, donating generously to low-income school districts. But in 2017Education experts have debated whether Zuckerberg’s earliest philanthropic investment was a flop or a flop. Although Zuckerberg has given Newark schools nearly $100 million in grants, test scores have yielded only varying improvements.
Zuckerberg and Chan’s original ideals faced their first major challenge in 2020. First, they clashed with some of their employees in the initial aftermath of the George Floyd protests in June 2020. 2020. Vox reported that an employee at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative publicly asked Zuckerberg to do one of three things: censor Trump’s inflammatory posts, resign from Facebook, or resign from the organization. (In response, Zuckerberg said, “I mean, no. None of that makes any sense.”) That same year, Chan and Zuckerberg donated more than $400 million to election nonprofits nonpartisanship to ensure voting access during the pandemic. IN The early days of 2020 election denialThis became a right-wing internet scandal, nicknamed “Zuckerbucks”, inspiring several offensive posts by Trump on Truth Social and earning money. entire hearing of the House Administration Committee.
For Zuckerberg, the wound began to fester. “Mr. Zuckerberg has complained to many people about the backlash against Meta stemming from the more politically sensitive aspects of his philanthropic efforts,” the report said. New York Times in September 2024. “And he regrets hiring staff at his charity who tried to push him further to the left for some reason.” They add that the CEO identifies politically with “classical liberalism,” possibly a sure sign that he was involved in the so-called Dark Wisdom.
As for Chan, her political leanings are mainly portrayed by the media as complementary to her husband’s. The first sign that things were changing for both members of the pair came in 2021, when they appeared to have moved to mend their reputations. Zuckerberg and Chan hired the longtime GOP strategist Brian Baker serving as their advisor—and helping them reach out to his fellow Republicans, according to Wall Street Journal.
In 2015, Zuckerberg is mentioned that he and Chan had had a miscarriage before their eldest daughter was born, and Chan told the following year Today‘S Savannah Guthrie why they decided to talk publicly about them. “It was so important to share our pregnancy experience because we realized how challenging and difficult it was,” she said in September 2016. nor alone.”
By June 2022, when of the Supreme Court Dobbs decision allow states to ban abortion, Chan wants to keep CZI out of the conversation about reproductive health care. Shortly after the decision, Chan reportedly sent a memo to her staff stating that she would not use the institute’s funding to address the issue of abortion access. “We need to be focused and clear about what we are here to do,” it said, according to Time. “We do not have any plans to expand our sponsorship into new areas.”
Now, the couple is publicly affiliated with a government work hard strip away bodily autonomy and, in some cases, limit medical treatments used to treat both abortion and miscarriage. Such limitations exist has put women’s lives in danger. On Tuesday morningThe new Trump administration has taken fertility.gov, the government website dedicated to reproductive care, offline.
Although we may never know how Chan felt about her husband’s performance above Joe Rogan’s Experience, we already know that she is used to waiting for her husband to return. “As partners, our relative optimism comes across when Mark is overly optimistic about managing his time and will get engrossed in interesting ideas,” she said on an episode of Scientist. taste, and he was late.” Andrew Hubermanpodcast by in 2023. “And because he was late, I had to consider Mark an optimist every time I waited for him.”
