Rashad Robinson

Civic leader Rashad Robinson was born on October 13, 1978 in Long Island, New York to Shirley Ann and Everett Robinson. He graduated from Riverhead High School in 1997. He went on to earn his B.A. degree in political science from Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia in 2001.

Robinson was hired as an organizer for the Education Trust, Inc. in 2001. That same year, he worked in after-school programming at the Maya Angelou Charter School in Washington D.C. Then, in 2002, he joined FairVote, an organization that advocates for electoral reform in the United States, as the national field director. Robinson stepped down from his position with FairVote in 2004. Shortly after, he was hired as the director of communications of Right to Vote at the JEHT Foundation. Robinson served as the campaign manager for Showtime Network’s political reality show American Candidate in 2004. Then, in 2005, he was hired as the senior director of media programs at GLAAD, a non-profit advocacy organization for the LGBTQ community. In 2010, Robinson was selected by the U.S. State Department's Diplomacy in Action Program to travel to Belgrade, Serbia to work with activists and journalists on cultural change and media advocacy strategies. In 2011, Robinson stepped down from his position at GLAAD, and he was hired as executive director and president of Color of Change, a non-profit advocacy organization for civil rights. Robinson appeared in Pay 2 Play: Democracy’s High Stakes, a documentary about the American political system, in 2014. Two years later, he appeared in the Netflix documentary 13th, about the American prison system. Robinson also worked as a consulting producer on the Netflix mini-series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story in 2022. Robinson stepped down from Color of Change in 2024.

Since 2016, Robinson has served as an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy Center for Public & Nonprofit Leadership in Washington D.C. Robinson has also served on the boards of directors for ALLOUT, the Applied Research Center, Demos, the Global Campaign for LGBT Equality, and State Voices. He is on the board of the Marguerite Casey Foundation.

Robinson resides in New York, New York.

Rashad Robinson was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on February 16 and May 8, 2023.