About — Semhar Araia

I believe diaspora communities are one of the most powerful forces in the world. The people who understand them best are the ones who have lived it. I am one of them.

I grew up the daughter of Eritrean immigrants who organized, advocated, and gave everything they had to a country still fighting to exist. That upbringing shaped how I see the world. It never left me.

I have spent my career building the infrastructure that diaspora communities deserve — inside institutions, and from scratch when those institutions did not exist. Every space I have built came from the same conviction: that when diaspora communities are given a name, a framework, and a room, they change what is possible.

Before founding The Diaspora Academy, Semhar built and led the Diaspora African Women's Network (DAWN) from 2007 to 2017 — a decade of organizing, convening, and developing African diaspora women focused on African affairs across 28 countries and four continents.

The Diaspora Academy is where that work lives.

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White House State Dinner Guest, President Biden & President Ruto 2024
MIPAD Top 100 Most Influential People of African Descent 2018
OkayAfrica Top 100 Women 2018
Smithsonian NMAAHC Next-Generation Voices Exhibit 2016
African Union Diaspora Awardee of the Year 2013
White House Champion of Change, President Obama 2012
The Root Top 100 2009

Semhar has testified before the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. She delivered the keynote at the IOM Global Diaspora Summit and has been featured in the Financial Times, BBC, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, and The Root.

She is the founder of The Diaspora Academy. She was born in New York City to Eritrean immigrant parents and is based in Washington, D.C.

I have built my life around this work.

The space you have been looking for? You might be the one who builds it.