Sylvana Simons

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

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

Silvana Hildegard "Sylvana" Simons (Dutch pronunciation: [sɪlˈvaːnaː ˈsimɔns]; born 31 January 1971) is a Surinamese-born Dutch politician and former television presenter.

She has served as a member of the House of Representatives since 2021 on behalf of BIJ1, an egalitarian anti-racist party founded by Simons in 2016.

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

Simons was born on 31 January 1971 in the Surinamese capital of Paramaribo to Wilfred Hugo Leeuwin (born 1928) and Roline Yvonne Kerk (born 1945).

She 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 Simons was aged one and a half and lived in the Amsterdam neighborhoods Kinkerbuurt and Osdorp.

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

Her father worked as a bookkeeper for an insurance company, while her mother was employed by IBM.

In her childhood, Simons rode horses and danced.

She 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.

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

At the age of fourteen, 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.

At first, she stayed at her half-sister in Amsterdam, but she later spent time in a youth shelter and in lodgings with assistance.

During that period, she attended the Amsterdams Lyceum and the Spinoza Lyceum, among others, but never graduated.

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

When she was twenty years old, she was admitted to the show and musical department of the Amsterdam University of the Arts, but she dropped out shortly after the start of the program because of her first pregnancy.

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.

She 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.

Harding asked her a few years later to join the new musical channel TMF.

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

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

She later gave up dancing to focus on her television career.

On TMF, Simons presented the show Sylvana's Soul, which helped popularize R&B in the Netherlands and earned her the nickname "Dutch Queen of R&B".

She also 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.

It reached position sixteen in the Dutch Top 40 and spent five weeks in that chart, but Simons has told that she was unable to sing and was mostly responsible for backing vocals.

She 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.

Simons left TMF in 1999 and joined SBS Broadcasting later that year, presenting Sexquiz on the beach, a new weekly couples quiz involving stripping candidates, starting in September.

She also hosted the program Politie door 't lint (Police snapping) and the first season of reality competition De bus, which was similar to Big Brother and which took place in a bus.

Next to her job at SBS, Simons presented a radio show on Radio 538, and she wrote columns for the Dutch edition of Playboy and for the short-lived ''More!

Simons left four years later to join SBS Broadcasting, where she presented reality television series De bus (2000).

She subsequently spent almost a decade at RTL Nederland, hosting the first few seasons of TV makelaar (2001–05) about home buying and the Saturday evening show Dancing with the Stars (2005–07).

Starting in 2009, Simons worked some years in public broadcasting as a radio presenter on Radio 6 and for the association NPS.

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

Her career change followed her questioning of a term which she deemed racially insensitive during talk show De wereld draait door the previous year.

Her speaking out against institutional racism – and especially Sinterklaas's blackfaced companion Zwarte Piet – caused fierce criticism on social media platforms and racist remarks and threats.

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

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

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