Ashley Biden

Biden works as a social justice activist and social worker.[17] After finishing graduate school, she gained a job at West End Neighborhood House, a non-profit organization, as their Employment and Education Liaison for adjudicating youth developing various employment and job skills training programs.[14][13][19] She worked as a social worker in the Delaware Department of Services for Children, Youth, and Their Families for fifteen years.[18][3] While working for the department, Biden created programs for youth focusing on juvenile justice, foster care, and mental health.[18] In 2008, she was listed in Delaware Today's "40 People to Watch" for her work in the department.[21] In 2012, she joined the Delaware Center for Justice as an associate director, focusing on criminal justice reform in the state.[18][12][4] She helped establish and run programs and services at the center focused on public education, adult victim services, gun violence, incarcerated women, and community reentry.[14] Overseeing all direct servicing programs at the center, Biden worked with victims of crime, adjudicated youth, elderly prisoners, adults on probation and parole, truant youth, and Pennsylvania courts of common pleas clients who were eligible for mediation.[14] In 2014, she was promoted to Executive Director of the center, and served in that capacity until 2019.[18][22] She implemented a program called SWAGG: Student Warriors Against Guns and Gangs, endorsed by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which provides educational resources and community-based support groups aimed at eliminating violent crimes and gang activity among youth in New Castle County.[14]

Biden playing with children at the Mapetla Day Care Centre in Soweto, South Africa during an official visit in June 2010.

In 2014, Biden criticized the death penalty, stating that it is not cost effective and wastes resources that could go towards victim services and crime prevention.[14]

She founded the Young@Art program that provides resources and outlets for students to create artwork while they are detained in detention facilities, and then sells the art in the community.[14] Half of the proceeds of the art go directly to the artists, and the other half goes into funding the program to buy art supplies and to pay the wages of youth who work at the community art shows.[14] Through the program, Biden also teaches the students business and financial literacy skills.[14]

In 2017, Biden launched the Livelihood Collection, an ethical fashion clothing brand, at Spring Place in TriBeCa during New York Fashion Week.[23][18][24][25] The launch event was attended by Biden's parents and celebrities including Olivia Palermo and Christian Siriano.[26][27] The brand collaborated with Gilt Groupe and Aubrey Plaza to raise $30,000 for the Delaware Community Foundation.[18][28][29] Livelihood's logo, an arrow piercing through the letters "LH", was inspired by Biden's half-brother Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015.[30][31] Biden stated that "[Beau] was my bow. His cancer brought me to my knees. I had no choice but to shoot forward, keep going, keep aiming at my own dreams."[30]

Biden created the brand to help combat income inequality and racial inequality in the United States.[18][12] All the proceeds from the brand launch at New York Fashion Week were allocated to programs for communities in need.[32][33][34] Ten percent of the brand's continued sales are donated to community organizations in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C. and the Riverside in Wilmington.[30] Livelihood's products are made with American-sourced organic cotton and are manufactured in the United States.[35][36] She decided to design hoodies due to their connection to the Labor Movement, and their symbolic significance toward social justice movements.[35][37] The brand's website provides information about civic engagement and economic justice.[35][36]

Along with Colleen Atwood, Barbara Tfank, Rachel Zoe, Bibhu Mohapatra, Betsey Johnson, Calvin Klein, Oscar de la Renta, Anna Sui, Paul Tazewell, and other designers and fashion houses, Biden designed outfits for 12-inch vinyl dolls of the Peanuts characters Snoopy and Belle for the 2017 Snoopy and Belle in Fashion exhibition.[38][39][40] The exhibition kicked off on September 7, 2017 at Brookfield Place in Manhattan.[41][42][43] It toured in San Diego, Los Angeles, and several other cities throughout the United States before closing on October 1, 2017.[38]

In June 2020, Biden designed the uniforms for the staff at the Hamilton Hotel in Washington, D.C. as an offshoot of her Livelihood Collection[30][44][45] The uniforms were unveiled at a private launch party.[44] The hotel donated $15,000 to Livelihood.[30][44]