Saira Rao, former Congressional Candidate, lawyer, author and entrepreneur

After running for Congress in 2018 as the potential first Congresswoman of color from Colorado, Saira Rao used her experience to co-found Race 2 Dinner, an organization that facilitates conversations to help dismantle racism and discrimination in America.

Rao is is a co-founder and creative director of In This Together Media, a book packaging company offering children’s fiction with greater diversity in terms of gender, race, sexual orientation and experience. She is the author of “Chambermaid” (Grove Press) and “The Madlands” (forthcoming).

Previously, Rao was a television news producer in Washington, D.C., and Miami; a policy associate at the Center for Educational Innovation at the Manhattan Institute; a law clerk on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit; and a lawyer at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP in New York City.

An interview with Rao will be available on YouTube  Jan. 18 beginning at 5 p.m. EST. The talk is sponsored by 44 New Voices, a project of the Newhouse School’s Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship.

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