Inside Nicole Shanahan's journey to becoming RFK Jr.'s running mate...from a brutal childhood to a billionaire love triangle: The daughter of Chinese immigrant mom on welfare who became a millionaire California lawyer and cover girl

Robert F. Kennedy's new running mate, 38-year-old Nicole Shanahan has the ultimate American rags-to-riches story. 

The lawyer, tech entrepreneur, philanthropist and mother-of-one grew up on welfare to a Chinese immigrant mother and father who was diagnosed with bipolar schizophrenia. 

She persevered through her tumultuous upbringing to obtain her law degree, start a company worth millions in her 20s, launch a foundation and now be considered for the second most powerful job in the world. 

But before she transitioned into politics, Shanahan was known for her role in an alleged love triangle involving two of the richest men in the world: ex-husband and Google co-founder Sergey Brin, ranked No. 10 in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and Elon Musk, who's currently ranked at No. 3. 

She's since moved on with her partner Jacob Strumwasser, who she committed to in a 'love ceremony' last summer, posing in a giant floral gown for a People Magazine spread. 

Robert F. Kennedy officially tapped Nicole Shanahan as his running mate Tuesday. The 38-year-old lawyer launched a company in her 20s - but she's most known for an alleged love triangle between two of the world's richest men 

Nicole Shanahan poses for the cover of Modern Luxury in 2021 

Shanahan's grandfather was a landlord in Macoa and her grandmother was a factory worker in China 'and because of the Communist revolution they met,' she explained when she returned to her undergraduate alma mater, the Tacoma, Washington-based University of Puget Sound in 2021. 

Her mother, she said, had to overcome a father who believed that a 'son was more valuable than a daughter.' 

'To the extent that he pushed my grandmother to continue having children until she bore a son,' Shanahan said. 'She never did. She had five daughters.'

In a way, however, her grandfather raised her mother to be a 'son.'  

She said her mother was a housekeeper before becoming an accountant and didn't reach the United States until she turned 30. 

Two years later, Shanahan was born. 

'My father was not well,' she said. We were very low income, we were on welfare.'

Nicole Shanahan (left) poses with her now ex-husband Sergey Brin (right), the billionaire Google co-founder 

'I had a very hard childhood with a lot of sadness, fear and instability,' she told People magazine last year. 'At times there was violence.' 

Shanahan said she was able to afford the University of Puget Sound through a UPS merit scholarship.  

'I actually hadn't even visited the campus prior to my move-in date because we didn't have funds to visit colleges,' she recalled. 

The future lawyer studied Asian Studies, economics and Mandarin Chinese and took some science classes, 'which I wasn't actually very good at here,' she said at the university appearance. 'But you still let me take those classes.'

She graduated in 2007 and headed to Switzerland where she received a certificate in WTO studies and to Singapore for a law student exchange as she sought her JD from Santa Clara University. She spent time working as a paralegal.

She said of her grandfather, 'He was so proud. He didn't really understand why I decided to go to law school but he liked the idea a lot.' 

She started her company, ClearAccessIP, while still in law school. 

Nicole Shanahan (right) and her ex-Sergey Brin on a Los Angeles red carpet in 2021

In a 2015 interview with Mogul, Shanahan said that the idea for ClearAccessIP was 'hypothetical' that she put into practice after working at several law firms and then a licensing company. 

'The more time I spent around patent data, the more I realized the value in aggregating it and creating standard processes of analysis around the patented technology,' she said. 

Shanahan added, 'I've always been attracted to the concept that you can own an idea, and that ideas can lead to people coming together to build something, and that something can potentially change the course of human history.' 

In the same interview she divulged that the three people she'd want to meet from history were fashion designer Coco Chanel, Ayn Rand - a favorite writer of libertarians - and Alan Turing, whose Turing test was used on machines to see if they could exhibit intelligent behavior. 

And in the light-hearted Q&A she talked about her funniest and most romantic dates. 

She had wed Bay Area investor Jeremy Asher Kranz in 2013 but the couple divorced in 2015. 

That was the same year that the very active Shanahan - who boasts paddle boarding, snowboarding, swimming, running and yoga as hobbies - met Brin at a yoga festival in Lake Tahoe. 

Nicole Shanahan (left) and Sergey Brin (right) out in New York City in 2016 

Both had Stanford ties, as Shanahan became a Stanford CodeX fellow at the prestigious Stanford Center for Legal Informatics in 2014. 

'We fell in love at Stanford, wandering the campus and talking about quantum physics,' she told People in 2023. 'He showed me around the areas he'd frequent when he was there as a masters student - and where he created Google with Larry Page!' 

'I was living in a fairytale. It was magical. It seemed like we really could solve a lot of the world's problems with tech then,' she said. 

Brin and Shanahan quietly married in 2018 and kept their nuptials hush-hush until 2019, after the birth of their daughter Echo. 

Since Echo's birth, Shanahan has been open with her fertility struggles - though in turn has been critical of the IVF option, saying that it was being 'sold irresponsibly.' 

She said that money should be going toward the goal of extending women's fertility into their 50s - and has put millions toward that cause since. 

'And I've tried to imagine where we would be as a field if all of the money that has been invested in IVF and all of the money that's been invested into marketing IVF and all of the government money that has been invested in subsidizing IVF, if just 10 percent of that went into reproductive longevity, research, and fundamental research, where we would be today,' she said in a 2021 interview.

In 2018, Shanahan put $6 million toward the launch of the Buck Institute's Center for Female Reproductive Longevity and Equality. 

A year later, she launched the Bia-Echo Foundation, which centers around three goals - reproductive longevity and equality, criminal justice reform and the environment - and put another $7.4 million toward the Buck Institute's center. 

In 2020, she sold ClearAccessIP to devote her time to the Bia-Echo Foundation. 

In the 2023 People interview, she talked about how she never got used to being among the mega-wealthy. 

'When I was living as a wife of a billionaire, I was not the best version of myself,' she reflected. 'I felt conflicted every day, like I couldn't access the thing that made me what I am.' 

'I couldn't access that 5-year-old girl who had to figure out how to turn a 30-year-old baseball mitt into something I could go to softball with,' she said. 'It was the girl who just had endless optimism and tenacity and that fight - 'cause I'm a fighter - and I didn't know how to switch gears. I tried for years. I looked around me for examples of how I could adapt to this new lifestyle.' 

The couple separated in 2021, with Brin filing for divorce in June 2022 and then in July 2022 she became an object of public fascination. 

The Wall Street Journal reported that Shanahan and Musk had a brief affair that led to Brin filing for divorce earlier that year and the two billionaires ending their years' long friendship. 

Both Shanahan and Musk have vehemently denied they were ever romantic while the Wall Street Journal continues to stand by the report. 

Shanahan told People that she and Musk had a conversation about autism, after Echo was diagnosed to be on the spectrum, and then she was 'shamed internationally for being a cheater.' 

'Did Elon and I have sex, like it was a moment of passion, and then it was over? No,' she said. 'Did we have a romantic relationship? No. We didn't have an affair.' 

It's unclear exactly how much Shanahan took away from the split, as the couple reportedly owned a massive Malibu estate - formerly owned by the singer Pink - a Manhattan penthouse, multiple properties in Silicon Valley and a 240-feet superyacht named Dragonfly. 

Most recently she was able to fork over $4 million to the Kennedy-aligned super PAC American Values 2024 to help fund the independent candidate's Super Bowl ad. 

Shanahan met Jacob Strumwasser at Burning Man during the summer of 2022 and held a 'love ceremony' in May 

Amid her divorce with Brin and as Google search results of Shanahan's name continued to tie her romantically with Musk, the Bay Area lawyer went to Burning Man and met her current partner, Strumwasser, through a friend. 

'We were living parallel surfing lives it seems, and then we met at Burning Man, which is the driest place on the planet, and talked about how much we missed surfing,' she told People in July. 'I feel really fortunate, he's lovely.' 

In May they held a 'love ceremony' instead of a traditional wedding. 

'There's a beach both he and I are very connected to, where we had independently surfed many times before meeting and then surfed together on an early date,' she said. 'We fell in love surfing there, and we did a love blessing ceremony with water we collected from that beach.' 

They then headed to her Southern California property. 

'It was spontaneous with a few friends,' she told People. 'We didn't know who was gonna end up there, but we had a handful of friends and we had a friend who believes in the magic of water lead a water blessing for us. It was beautiful.'