Raju Narisetti has always had a way with words — and it’s no wonder. As a child, if he wasn’t rummaging through his parents’ 10,000 book library, then he was writing letters to the editors of his favorite newspapers. Since then, he has gone on to enjoy a 25-year career in journalism, writing for publications including The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
After his journalism career, Raju embraced the role as a media business executive and educator. He held a tenure as a professor of journalism at Columbia University, fulfilled the role of CEO for the media group Gizmodo, and founded the Mint business newspaper in India.
As an immigrant of Hyderabad, India, Narisetti's path towards becoming one of the world's finest journalists wasn’t an easy one. After being accepted to Indiana University, Raju immigrated to the United States with little more than a promise of academic financial aid, some traveler’s checks, and a passion for storytelling.
Along with the education he earned in the classroom, Raju also learned through the lessons that came with his immigration experience. He had to teach himself how to distinguish between interactions of genuine curiosity versus those of toxicity; how to react to condescension, stereotyping, and flat-out racism with compassion rather than frustration; how to react with an eye towards education rather than confrontation.
All of the hardships, lessons, and achievements that made up Raju’s personal, academic, and professional lives lend themselves to his passion for fact-based storytelling — whether it was his own story that he was telling, or that of the subject matter on the page — Raju has always had a love for gathering knowledge and telling a story with it. His passion turned profession — writing evocatively, and informing those who are willing to listen — has always been at the heart of his work and the way he’s lead his life.
Today, Raju Narisetti is global publishing director at McKinsey & Co., a philanthropist, and a chair among the board of trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation — publisher of Wikipedia. In this age of ambiguous news trustworthiness, Raju is a champion of the truth. He particularly stresses the importance of protecting open-content, digital resources like Wikipedia. Not only are these tools invaluable for people who may live in censorship-heavy countries, says Narisetti, but they are one of the last remaining bastions left in the fight to drown out fake news in favor of the truth.
In this episode of Stories of Transformation, we discuss the complexity of the immigrant experience; drawing the line between who and who not to interact with, and how to react to cultural ignorance with an eye towards education rather than confrontation; how the personality of the United States has changed in the eyes of the world; and the importance of protecting open-content, digital libraries like Wikipedia.
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Twitter: twitter.com/raju
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajunarisetti/
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Credits
Produced by: Joseph Gangemi
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Digital Marketing & Media by: Katherine An https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherine-a-91081b56/
Theme music by: Qais Essar
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Artwork by: Masheed Ahadi
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Episode Music Credits
Philip Daniel Zach