80 Facts About Sylvana Simons

Silvana Hildegard "Sylvana" Simons is a Surinamese-born Dutch politician and former television presenter.

Sylvana Simons served as a member of the House of Representatives between 2021 and 2023 on behalf of BIJ1, an egalitarian anti-racist party founded by Simons in 2016.

Sylvana Simons was born in Suriname and moved to the Netherlands while an infant.

Sylvana Simons was a dancer in the Amsterdam nightlife scene before becoming a VJ for the new music channel TMF in 1995.

Sylvana Simons subsequently spent almost a decade at RTL Nederland, hosting the first few seasons of about home buying and the Saturday evening show Dancing with the Stars.

Sylvana Simons transitioned to politics in 2016, when she joined minority rights party DENK.

Sylvana Simons left DENK after seven months to establish her own political party called Artikel 1, which was later renamed BIJ1.

Sylvana Simons did not win a seat in the 2017 general election, but she was elected to the Amsterdam municipal council the following year.

Sylvana Simons became the first black parliamentary leader in Dutch history following her election to the House of Representatives in 2021.

Sylvana Simons was raised without her siblings even though her father and her mother had fifteen children and one child, respectively, from previous relationships.

The family came to the Netherlands when Sylvana Simons was aged one and a half and lived in the Amsterdam neighborhoods Kinkerbuurt and Osdorp.

Sylvana Simons moved to the North Holland city of Hoorn another ten years later, growing up in its neighborhood Grote Waal.

Sylvana Simons's father worked as a bookkeeper for an insurance company, while her mother was employed by IBM.

Sylvana Simons had started dancing lessons at the age of seven and later did preparatory training in Amsterdam for the ballet academy, dreaming of becoming the first black soloist of the Dutch National Ballet.

Sylvana Simons went to the secondary school RSG West-Friesland, initially studying at vwo level, but she later switched to havo.

At the age of fourteen, Sylvana Simons moved out of her parents's house after her father had told her to leave if she did not want to abide by his rules.

Sylvana Simons went to the Lucias Marthas Institute For Performing Arts and the Hairdressing Academy, finishing neither school.

Sylvana Simons began her career in 1989 as a dancer for the Amsterdam nightclub iT and during performances of musicians such as CB Milton and Grace Jones.

Sylvana Simons went on tour with 2 Brothers on the 4th Floor and performed as backing for UB40 at the World Liberty Concert in Arnhem.

Sylvana Simons appeared in commercials for Pepsi, Philips, and Victoria Vesta.

Sylvana Simons did a screen test for radio and television executive Lex Harding in 1992 after he had seen her dance in the Veronica music program Countdown.

Sylvana Simons accepted and started as VJ and interviewer at its launch in May 1995.

Sylvana Simons later gave up dancing to focus on her television career.

Sylvana Simons recorded the single "Get Close To You" with fellow VJs Fabienne de Vries, Bridget Maasland, and Isabelle Brinkman as part of the music group The Magnificent Four.

Sylvana Simons became a board member of Mixt, a foundation attempting to combat racism through music and the organizer of the annual pop festival Racism Beat It, in early 1999.

Sylvana Simons had two shows on that station, Sylvana and Sylvana's Soul, which were broadcast on Friday and Saturday evenings, respectively.

Sylvana Simons started presenting her second show for RTL Nederland in November 2001, when debuted.

Sylvana Simons was the sole host of the program, in which she assisted people in their search for a new home.

Sylvana Simons became the sole host of the book program, which first aired in April 2004.

Sylvana Simons had already been in the same role at Stichting Pink Ribbon, which raises awareness of breast cancer, since 2004.

Sylvana Simons co-hosted the second season of Dancing with the Stars in the first half of 2006.

Sylvana Simons presented three reality television shows later that year:, in which people went on their dream holiday;, in which she helped family business owners find their successor; and, in which residents gave their street a makeover.

Sylvana Simons presented a third season of Dancing with the Stars in early 2007 as well as the new RTL 5 reality show Ex Wives Club along with two other hosts.

Sylvana Simons did continue hosting Char, and she co-hosted the daily RTL 4 program with a dozen other presenters in the summer of 2008 about people going on their holiday.

Sylvana Simons permanently left Radio 6 at the start of 2014, while remaining the host of North Sea Jazz Festival coverage and on television.

Sylvana Simons was coupled with professional dancer Redmond Valk, who was later replaced by Aerjen Mooijweer because of an injury, and they were the season's runners-up.

In late 2012, Sylvana Simons presented the three-episode music series Puro 43 Music Sessions on RTL 8.

Sylvana Simons later worked as a public speaking and personal leadership coach as co-owner of The House of Power.

Sylvana Simons participated in the theater tour LULverhalen, in which women talked about an either literal or figurative dick, in 2015.

Sylvana Simons has told that she decided to publicly speak out against institutional racism following a May 2015 incident and the reactions it had brought about, which included fierce criticism on social media: in an episode of, presenter Martin Simek used the word in a discussion about immigrants, causing Sylvana Simons to question him on his usage of the word.

The described 2015 as the year in which Sylvana Simons had become the figurehead of the Dutch black community because of this event and her opposition to, whom she had protested at the national arrival of in Meppel.

Sylvana Simons joined the left-wing minority rights party DENK on 18 May 2016, and it was simultaneously announced that she would run for member of the House of Representatives in the 2017 general election.

Sylvana Simons had been asked by Kuzu to join the party, and she started serving as a communications advisor.

Sylvana Simons indicated an interest in anti-racism, decolonizing education, and empowering women.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Minister Lodewijk Asscher condemned the reactions, calling them "disgusting", and Sylvana Simons filed a police report.

DENK announced in November 2016 that Sylvana Simons was receiving protection following a threat video on Dailymotion.

Sylvana Simons left DENK on 24 December 2016 to establish a party of her own called Artikel 1 to participate in the 2017 general election.

Sylvana Simons told that she wanted to belong to a party where she felt safe.

Sylvana Simons criticized DENK for being more concerned with celebrating media attention than with Simons's well-being when she received protection.

Sylvana Simons said that there was not enough space at DENK to stand up for women's and LGBT rights because of its conservative supporters.

Sylvana Simons founded her new party, which was named after the constitution's article addressing equality before the law and prohibiting discrimination, with DENK's campaign manager Ian van der Kooye.

Sylvana Simons co-wrote a book ahead of the election called.

Sylvana Simons was the lead candidate of Artikel 1, and its party list contained more women than men, several people from the LGBT community, and both the youngest and oldest candidate of the election.

In March 2018, Sylvana Simons participated in the municipal election in Amsterdam as her party's lead candidate.

Sylvana Simons campaigned on a platform of economic justice, radical equality, and the importance of intersectionality, and she told that she wanted Amsterdam to maintain its inclusivity.

Sylvana Simons refused to participate in a debate after learning that she would have to debate Annabel Nanninga one-on-one.

Sylvana Simons said there had been excessive and unnecessary police violence and told that teenagers of color lived in an understandable fear of the police.

Sylvana Simons introduced motions to stop the municipality from fining homeless people for sleeping in the streets and to provide white privilege training for civil servants.

Newspaper wrote that Sylvana Simons was able to influence the council's agenda during her time in office despite having only one seat.

Sylvana Simons played a role in getting the city to apologize for its history of slavery, in making the toilets of the Stopera unisex, and in getting the city to proclaim a climate crisis.

Sylvana Simons called her party's platform the country's "most leftist, greenest, and most inclusive".

Sylvana Simons rejected capitalism, saying that it is based on the illusion of endless economic growth and that it leads to poverty, exploitation, and exclusion.

BIJ1 won one seat in the March 2021 general election causing Sylvana Simons to be elected to the House of Representatives.

Sylvana Simons's election occurred amidst the anti-racism movement Black Lives Matter gaining traction following the murder of George Floyd in the United States by a police officer in May 2020.

Sylvana Simons filed a motion in July 2021 in which she argued that the cabinet's strategy of "letting [the virus] run wild in a controlled way" had led to 30,000 deaths.

Sylvana Simons described her family history of slavery when potential apologies for the Netherlands' history of slavery were discussed in a House debate in 2021.

Sylvana Simons was less active in debates during the last period of her term due to her membership of the Parliamentary Inquiry into Fraud Policy and Public Service, initiated as a result of the Dutch childcare benefits scandal.

House Speaker Vera Bergkamp later defended Tellegen's actions in a letter after Sylvana Simons had filed a complaint.

Sylvana Simons cited her health and well-being reasons for her decision not to run.

Sylvana Simons was succeeded as party leader by Edson Olf, BIJ1's vice chair.

Sylvana Simons's son, Salvatore, was born in 1992, when she was 21 years old.

Sylvana Simons has described the father and her then boyfriend as abusive and depressed.

Sylvana Simons has told that he stalked her after the end of their three-year relationship, and he died about a year after the birth of their child.

Sylvana Simons's second child, Levi, was born in 1996, shortly before Simons's father died by suicide.

From late 1998 to 1999, Sylvana Simons lived in London with her British boxer boyfriend and two children while still working in the Netherlands.

Sylvana Simons moved to Duivendrecht, situated close to Amsterdam, in 2001 after having spent the intermittent time in Diemen.

Sylvana Simons married entrepreneur Frank van Hoorn in early 2003 in Costa Rica.

Sylvana Simons wrote a book about the household, consisting of herself, her husband, her two children, her husband's two teenage daughters, and an au pair, called 1+1=7.

Sylvana Simons moved from Duivendrecht to Amsterdam, when she became a municipal councilor in 2018 to satisfy a residency requirement, but had moved back to the former village by the time she was installed as member of parliament in 2021.

Sylvana Simons often reflects on her day and her actions through a conversation with herself in the mirror.