She grew up in San Francisco and New York City, and graduated cum laude from Yale University. After graduation, she founded Third Wave Direct Action Corporation, a national non-profit organization devoted to cultivating young women's leadership and activism. Third Wave initiated an historic emergency youth drive that registered over 20,000 new voters in inner cities across the United States. Rebecca is also a writer and has been a contributing editor to Ms. magazine since 1989. Her writing, which engages such issues as reproductive freedom, domestic violence, and sexuality has been published in Essence, the New York Daily News, SPIN, Harper's, VIBE, and various women's and black studies anthologies. Walker's first book, To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism, explores young women's struggle to reclaim and redefine feminism and has become a standard text for women's studies courses across America. Her memoir Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of A Shifting Self, is an intimate portrait of growing up biracial in a racially divided world. Her newest book is entitled Putting Down the Gun: Twenty Writers on the Future of Masculinity. Equally concerned with communicating with people who do not read, Rebecca has hosted a television forum on inner city teen violence, pregnancy, and drug abuse. She has also produced segments for young adult programming that focus on youth activism among homeless teens, and the youth response to nuclear weaponry. She has received the Feminist of the Year award from the Fund for the Feminist Majority, the Paz Y Justicia Award from the Vanguard Foundation, and the Champion of Choice award from the California Abortion Rights Action League..

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