Andrea Kramer is an artist and women’s rights activist. Her one-of-a-kind, handmade jewelry is inspired by her personal crusade to empower women and promote gender equality.
While traveling in Africa and Asia, Andie saw unique jewelry and fabrics worn by locals for special occasions. Inspired by the personal yet bold statement of these celebratory decorations, she began combining unexpected materials—bone, horn, glass, wood, vintage Lucite, rhinestones and clay—creating unusually bold accessories. Each piece features an Andie K charm and printed story revealing the unique origin of its beads.
Driven by more than an artistic vision, Andie seeks out women artists and Fair Trade producers. Many programs teach women how to make beads to support their families. These Fair Trade projects, like Bead For Life, a paper bead producer in Uganda, provide unemployed and uneducated women with a living wage vital to domestic safety. In a factory outside Nairobi, Kenya, she saw Kazuri beads made by women for a fair wage, daycare services, and access to medical care.
Andie K contributes to charities that benefit women and children.
Since its launch at the end of 2012, Andie K has contributed to The Women’s Treatment Center of Chicago, The Chicago Foundation for Women®, and A Silver Lining Foundation®, among others.
Andie Kramer is a partner in an international law firm that is listed as one of the “10 Best Big Law Firms for Female Attorneys.”
Andie Kramer & Al Harris
Andie is head of the firm’s Financial Products, Trading and Derivatives Group, and is the founding chair of the firm’s Gender Diversity Committee, currently serving as its co-chair. She has served on both her firm’s Management Committee and Compensation Committee. In these roles, she became deeply concerned about the disparities in the pace and extent of women’s and men’s career achievements.
Andie has vigorously worked to remove discriminatory barriers to women’s career advancement for over 30 years. Despite her successful and demanding legal practice, Andie has helped thousands of women navigate both obvious and subtle gender-based obstacles to successful careers. Her keen insights into the nature and operation of gender bias and her pragmatic techniques for avoiding or overcoming these obstacles have made her a nationally recognized authority on gender discrimination, the nature and operation of stereotypes and biases, and practices and policies to increase women’s leadership opportunities. However, Andie believes strongly that gender is not the entire story. She has also focused her efforts on other workplace issues that hold women back in the workplace, including racial and ethnic biases, age biases, LGBTQ biases, and biases against mothers.
Andie is the co-author, with her husband, Al Harris, of Breaking Through Bias (Second Edition): Communication Techniques for Women to Succeed at Work (September 2020) and It’s Not You It’s the Workplace, Women’s Conflicts at Work and the Bias that Built It (August 2019). She is a co-author of the American Bar Association’s guide “What You Need to Know About Negotiating Compensation.” She has written hundreds of articles and blog posts, and she’s a Forbes contributor. Visit the Andie and Al website to learn more about their work.