Marianne Deborah Williamson (born July 8, 1952) is an American author, spiritual leader, and political activist. A frequent guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show, she is the author of fourteen books, including four New York Times number one bestsellers in the "Advice, How To, and Miscellaneous" category. She is also the founder of Project Angel Food, a volunteer food delivery program that serves home-bound people with HIV/AIDS and life-threatening illnesses, as well as the co-founder of the Peace Alliance, a nonprofit education and advocacy organization. In 2014, Williamson unsuccessfully ran as an independent representing California's 33rd congressional district in the United States House of Representatives. On January 9, 2019, she announced her campaign for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 United States presidential election and suspended her campaign on January 10, 2020. She later endorsed Bernie Sanders at a rally in Austin, Texas, on February 23, 2020. On February 23, 2023, she stated that she plans to run for president again in the 2024 Democratic presidential primaries, challenging incumbent president Joe Biden. Early life and education Williamson was born in Houston, Texas, in 1952. She was the youngest of three children of Samuel "Sam" Williamson, a World War II veteran and immigration lawyer, and Sophie Ann Kaplan, a homemaker and community volunteer. Williamson was raised upper-middle-class in a family that practiced Conservative Judaism. Her family attended Congregation Beth Yeshurun. She learned about world religions and social justice at home, but first became interested in speaking from the pulpit on social matters when she saw her rabbi speak against the Vietnam War. Her family also traveled internationally during the summers when she was a child. She has said that it was through travel that she "had an experience, at a young age, that people are the same everywhere." Williamson attended Houston ISD's Bellaire High School. After graduating, she spent two years studying theater and philosophy at Pomona College in Claremont, California, where she was a roommate of eventual film producer Lynda Obst. In 1973, Williamson dropped out of college and lived "a nomadic existence" during what she calls "her wasted decade." She moved to New Mexico, where she took classes at the University of New Mexico and lived in a geodesic dome with her boyfriend. The couple broke up a year later. Marianne then moved to Austin, Texas, where she took classes at the University of Texas. After leaving Texas, she