Eps. 143 Brandii Grace, Democratic Candidate for the 38th Assembly District by The Talk of Santa Clarita

Brandii Grace is a resident of Porter Ranch. She is married and is the mother of a small child. Born in Long Beach, Brandii grew up in extreme poverty living with her grandmother sometimes even experiencing homelessness. But Brandii worked hard for her family, eventually managing to graduate from Western Washington University. She has since had a successful career in computer programming. Brandii has designed video games and now teaches the methods to do so. She is also one of the few women in the world to create and sell a tech startup in the video game industry.

Brandii has been active in politics for most of her life beginning as a child and is currently a member of the Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council. Now, she is running for the California Assembly. This has presented quite a few challenges for anyone who has entered the race. Until the Katie Hill controversy, it looked like Democrat Christy Smith was going to easily keep the seat for at least another two years. But now that Christy has chosen to run for Congress, several candidates have emerged to run for the seat. All of faced the same problems. They have found themselves running for a seat which wasn't expected to have a need to be filled. So the race has happened quickly, surprisingly and with only a small window to raise funds before the jungle primary.

I met with Brandii the last week of January. I found her to be extremely knowledgeable of the issues we discussed and extremely interesting as a person. It's not often that you see someone rise from homelessness to the level of success which she has achieved. She was also just a lot of fun to talk to. Let's face it, she programs video games, so yes, Geek Alert! We also discussed everything from Star Trek to Pokemon and people, you have to listen to the whole podcast if for any other reason to hear her do the Pokemon Team Rocket rap in Japanese.

Click on the link below to watch a video of the podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B9p-ust4HE