Introduction
Omar Tomas Wasow (born 1970 in Nairobi, Kenya) is an assistant professor of politics at Princeton University. He is co-founder for the social networking website BlackPlanet.
Life
Wasow grew up in a multi-ethnic family. His father is of German Jewish heritage, and his mother is African-American. Wasow's paternal grandfather was the mathematician Wolfgang R. Wasow. Both Wolfgang Wasow and Omar Wasow's paternal grandmother are of German Jewish heritage.
Education
Wasow is a graduate of Stuyvesant High School in New York City, where he was president of the student union.He then graduated from Stanford University in California with a BA degree in race and ethnic relations.
Wasow earned a PhD in African-American studies, an MA in government and an MA in statistics, all from Harvard University. Wasow is currently assistant professor of politics at Princeton University.
Career
In 1995, Wasow was proclaimed by Newsweek as one of the "fifty most influential people to watch in cyberspace."
In 1999 he created Blackplanet, one of the first major social networking sites.
Personal
In 2012, Wasow married Jennifer Brea, a documentary filmmaker he met while they were both Ph.D. students at Harvard. He appears in her documentary film Unrest about her experience living with myalgic encephalomyelitis which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.