About

Farai has combined media, technology, and diversity during her 20-year career as an award-winning author and journalist. Chideya is a political contributor to WNYC, where she also hosts a series of town hall meetings, and is an advisor to the technology and ecommerce company Etsy.

In the 2010-2011 school year, Chideya served as “Leader in Residence” at the Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies, where she focused on media training the next generation of public policy leaders. She speaks frequently to business, college, civic, and youth audiences, and also provides media training services to other journalists and business and civic leaders. She was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, and graduated from Harvard University Magna Cume Laude in 1990.

In 2010, Chideya produced multimedia political specials about the midterm elections in partnership with WNYC and American Public Media. The team behind “Pop and Politics with Farai Chideya” road-trippd through America to interview people about economic anxiety and national identity crises concerning religion, immigration, and race. Chideya originally launched PopandPolitics.com as a blog in 1995.

From 2006 to early 2009, Chideya hosted NPR’s News and Notes. She has been a reporter for ABC News, a political analyst for CNN, a host for the Oxygen Network, and continues to appear on television as a cultural commentator. She and the teams she has worked with have won awards including a National EducationReporting Award, a North Star News Prize, and a special award from the National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association for coverage of AIDS.

Chideya has written three nonfiction books: Trust: Reaching the 100 Million Missing Voters; The Color of Our Future; and Don’t Believe the Hype: Fighting Cultural Misinformation About African Americans. Her novel Kiss the Sky (Atria Books) was released in hardcover May 2009 and paperback May 2010. All are taught on college campuses across the country in subjects from ethnic studies to pop culture.

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