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In March 2017, Meena Harris set up a website to sell T-shirts in honor of International Women's Day. She figured she'd sell a couple hundred. She sold 10,000.
She called it Phenomenal Woman, a homage to a poem by Maya Angelou, and ran it as a side-project while working in Silicon Valley. The venture always had a dual social impact: To amplify issues affecting underrepresented communities and to help nonprofits serving them. Within a year, the company branched out from feminist messaging to other statements, such as a T-shirt that reads, "Phenomenally Latina"--sales of which benefit the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health. Its causes broadened to voting advocacy, human rights, and social justice in the past year. For example, a "Justice for Breonna Taylor" shirt that echoed and amplified the sentiment that in mid-2020 became a rallying cry on social media.