Timothy Perry Shriver (born August 29, 1959) is an American disability rights activist, film producer, and former educator who has been Chairman of Special Olympics since 1996[2][3][4] and is the founder[5] of UNITE.

[11] Shriver has served on the Board of Directors of The Future Project, a national initiative to empower young people to discover their passion and change the world, since its founding.

In recent years, Shriver stepped down as CEO from the Special Olympics to launch UNITE, a national initiative for bringing Americans across divides together in common purpose to address universal challenges that can only be solved together.

In 2008, Shriver and supporters called for a boycott of the movie Tropic Thunder, claiming that it mocks people with mental disabilities.

In a commentary for CNN, Shriver wrote in part, Together with the members of the international coalition, I am asking Steven Spielberg, Stacey Snider, Ben Stiller and the entire "Tropic Thunder" team to stop showing the film, and asking movie theaters and moviegoers to shut this movie out.

Shriver married Linda Potter (born January 13, 1956)[15] on May 31, 1986 at Dahlgren Chapel on the Georgetown University campus.

[22][21] Linda Potter is the great-granddaughter of Archibald D. Russell, a great-great-granddaughter of Percy Rivington Pyne I, and a great-great-great-granddaughter of Dr. James Russell, a former president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and Moses Taylor, who was one of the greatest railroad, iron, and coal company financiers and was president of National City Bank for 27 years.

She is also a direct descendant of the merchant Russell Sturgis (1750-1826), Elizabeth (née Perkins) Sturgis (a sister of merchant Thomas Handasyd Perkins), Walter Rutherfurd (1723–1804) and Catherine Alexander (1727–1801), daughter of James Alexander and Mary Spratt Provoost.