Shawnee Pearl Badger is an actor (SAG-AFTRA), internationally published model, activist and artist living in Los Angeles, CA. In 2024, Shawnee will play Laura in Tennessee Williams’, The Glass Menagerie (The Main Theatre). Shawnee most recently performed as Catherine in the Pulitzer Prize winning play, Proof by David Auburn (The Main Theatre). She has also performed as the leading role, Corie, in Barefoot in the Park by Neil Simon (The Main Theatre); Death in Everybody by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (CalArts); Eurydice in Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl (The Main Theatre); Polly in The Gingerbread Lady by Neil Simon (The Main Theatre).

Born and raised in Los Angeles, CA, Shawnee found escape as a child in the worlds of her imagination, always wanting to play in the pretend. After graduating with various honors, accidentally earning 5 Associate’s Degree’s Cum Laude and Magna Cum Laude, and receiving admissions offers from both UCLA and UC Berkeley, she instead chose to follow her heart and pursue her passion: acting.

A lover of both stage and screen work, Shawnee chose California Institute of the Arts, one of the top drama schools in the world, for her BFA. In between auditions, theatre rehearsals and performances, she also works in entertainment at the Disneyland Resort.

When she isn’t performing, she is passionately involved in fighting and advocating for human rights, animal rights, and environmental justice. Shawnee made history when she authored and passed both a resolution and language into the 2018 California Democratic Party Platform pertaining to the importance of the education and promotion of plant-based living, as animal agriculture is a leading driver of our climate crisis. Her vegan resolution was the first to pass a major state political party in the United States and her amendment to the platform made the California Democratic Party the first major state party platform in the country to include language emphasizing the importance of a plant-based lifestyle. Her work was the first time veganism was discussed at all within the California Democratic Party and she is credited with inspiring her dear friend, Assemblymember Ash Kalra’s ACR 279, a similar resolution which passed through the California Legislature.

In 2020, Shawnee was awarded with the Los Angeles County Democratic Party Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Democrat of the Year Award. In 2022, she was named a 40 Under Forty honoree.

Shawnee has worked as a published model (Elle Girl Japan, Vogue Italia, and much more). Her other passions include climbing mountains, figure skating, playing Dungeons and Dragons, painting, kayaking, pottery, dancing, running and rock climbing. Her adventurous spirit has led her to the finish line of the Los Angeles Marathon, the summits of some of the tallest mountains in Southern California, to the top of the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States—Mt Whitney, over 10,000 feet up an active volcano, and across the arctic circle to gaze upon the Northern Lights.