Short Bio

Bestselling Author, Here We Are: American Dreams, American Nightmares
Award-winning NPR journalist
Creator and Host, “Art of Power” podcast

Long Bio

Aarti Shahani is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author. In her first career, she served immigrant prisoners in post 9/11 New York. Then, in three years flat, she pivoted to business journalism and enjoyed a meteoric rise at NPR as Silicon Valley correspondent. She led 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: what have you learned about how power really works? Her eighth guest is Barack Obama.

Aarti’s first book Here We Are (Macmillan) chronicles her unlikely journey from undocumented kid in Queens NYC to the American Dream, all while watching her father’s life fall apart at the hands of I.C.E. prosecution.

Aarti guest hosts NPR’s Fresh Air and KQED Forum, the Bay Area’s leading live daily news show. She’s also hosted All Things Considered and PBS’s Amanpour & Co. 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. Her activism has been honored by the Legal Aid Society (New York chapter) and the National Immigrant Justice Center (Illinois).

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 gorgeous family.

* photo by @NickolaiHammar