Uniting
Research and Policy

Aishwarya Raje, MPP'21, is a Senior Officer for Public Advocacy at the International Rescue Committee.

While at Harris Public Policy, Raje was a team lead at Root of Conflict, a podcast collaboration between The Pearson Institute and UChicago Public Policy Podcasts (UC3P). She also worked as a Policy Research Intern in the International Rescue Committee's Office of the President and in the summer of 2020, she served as a mayoral fellow with the City of Chicago, conducting research on policy issues facing the City of Chicago including human trafficking, infrastructure, and women- and minority-owned small business growth. Prior to her current role, she was a Policy Advisor at Mercy Corps.

Prior to her time at the University of Chicago, Raje served as a research assistant and program coordinator in the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC.  Her research at CSIS focused on health systems capacity in fragile settings, such as the regional health security risks of the Venezuelan political and economic crisis and the increase of violent attacks against healthcare workers in Syria and Yemen. She attended the Munich Security Conferences in 2018 and 2019, where she helped organize high-level health security roundtables. She also coordinated the CSIS Women’s Health Policy Forum, which aimed to generate continued bipartisan support for women’s health and international family planning as key pillars to US global health policy. Previously, she has held positions at Meridian International Center, the American Foreign Service Association, the Argentine Network for International Cooperation, and the International Rescue Committee.

Raje holds a bachelor’s degree in international studies and Spanish from Johns Hopkins University and studied abroad in Argentina. She speaks Spanish, Marathi, and elementary Russian.