James Pearson Steyer (born 1956) is an American children's advocate, civil rights attorney, professor and author. He founded Common Sense Media, an organization that "provides education and advocacy to families to promote safe technology and media for children." Early life and education Steyer was born in New York City in 1956. His mother, Marnie (née Fahr), was a remedial reading teacher at the Brooklyn House of Detention, and his father, Roy Henry Steyer, was a partner in the New York law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell. His father was Jewish and his mother Episcopalian. He has two brothers: Hume Steyer and Tom Steyer. Steyer was highly influenced by his mother, who would sometimes bring him to class as her teaching assistant. In an article in the Los Angeles Times, Steyer’s college friend, Mike Tollin, said "[Jim’s] whole focus on kids comes from his close relationship with his mother…She was the kind of woman who would sit you down, ask you how things were, and you felt like you needed to tell her the truth." Steyer graduated early from Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and worked with his mother teaching remedial reading at a public school in Harlem. Steyer later graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University where he was awarded the Lindsey Peters Award for Outstanding Work in American Government. After two years of community development work in Asia, he attended Stanford Law School and graduated in 1983. During law school, Steyer was part of a group that founded the East Palo Alto Community Law Project, a non-profit legal services center for low-income families in East Palo Alto, California. After Stanford, he became a law clerk for Justice Allen Broussard of the California Supreme Court. He then served as a civil rights attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. There, he helped spearhead the Poverty and Justice Program, focused on developing national legal and legislative strategies on behalf of disadvantaged African Americans. Career Steyer has been teaching courses as a professor at Stanford University in political science, education, civil rights and civil liberties for 35 years. He has also authored three books: The Other Parent: The Inside Story of the Media’s Effect on our Children in 2002, which focuses on the effects certain media and government regulators have on children, Talking Back to Facebook: The Common Sense Guide to Raising Kids in the Digital Age in 2012, and Which