PROFILE

Melissa Giraud, M.A. (she/her), ​is co-founder and co-director of ​EmbraceRace, where she leads efforts to support parents, educators, and other caregivers to raise children who are thoughtful, informed, and brave about race.

She has spent a lifetime trying to center the voices, experiences and concerns of children and families, with a particular interest in immigrant kids of color and first-generation children. She is the multiracial (Black/White) daughter of immigrants from Dominica and Quebec.

Professionally, Melissa has sought to empower marginalized kids and families, first as an elementary school educator teaching in a bilingual (Spanish/English) program in a predominantly Mexican and Mexican American neighborhood in Chicago, then as an NPR producer in D.C. driven to recruit voices and perspectives from communities of color in the newsroom, and later as a radio reporter who collaborated with her former elementary students as they were –12 education and equity in graduate school and has been a consultant to numerous foundations and organizations, with special attention to the promise and perils of technology in advancing educational equity.

Melissa earned a B.A. in history from the University of Chicago and an M.A. in Education from The Ohio State University.