Aarti Shahani is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author. She spent her 20s organizing immigrant prisoners, and then pivoted in 3 years flat to business journalism. She enjoyed a meteoric rise at NPR as Silicon Valley correspondent, leading the network’s coverage of Google, Meta/Facebook, Uber and many others. On her hit podcast Art of Power (a co-production with WBEZ), Aarti sits down with luminaries to ask: how does power work in the real world? How has your exercise of power transformed you? Her eighth guest is a guy from Hawaii named Barack Obama. Aarti’s first book Here We Are (Macmillan) chronicles her unlikely journey from undocumented kid in Queens, New York to national voice on the frontlines of the most powerful industry on earth. Some reviews:

“Riveting…a bruising critique of colonialism” (NPR); “heartfelt, galvanizing” (San Francisco Chronicle); “among the finest memoirs written in recent decades…a vivid, almost cinematic journey that is both beautiful and unforgettable” (Guy Raz, How I Built This and TED Radio Hour); “searing, searching” (Ezra Klein, New York Times)

Aarti regularly hosts Forum, the Bay Area’s leading live daily news show (KQED/NPR). Her reporting has received an Edward R. Murrow Award, an Investigative Reporters & Editors Award, and an award from the Society of Professional Journalists. Her very first newsroom was ProPublica. She’s had the honor of guest hosting All Things Considered and CNN’s Amanpour & Co.

Aarti graduated from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government with a full scholarship from the university and additional support from the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. She completed her bachelor’s degree in anthropology at the University of Chicago. She was among the youngest recipients of the Charles H. Revson Fellowship at Columbia University. She is an alumna of The Brearley School, which she also attended on full scholarship.

Aarti lives in San Francisco with her partner and son. She’s crazy stupid in love.

* photo by @NickolaiHammar