Jahnavi Rao

Jahnavi Rao is the President and Founder of the 501(c)3 New Voters, which she founded as a junior at her high school in Pennsylvania. She has directly led over 200 directors and interns and under her leadership, New Voters has grown to civically engage over 80,000 high school students across 300+ high schools in 39 states. She also serves as the Director and Founder of the New Voters Research Network, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland. Jahnavi graduated from Harvard College in May 2023, majoring in Government with a minor in Music.

Jahnavi has also served as an intern in the White House Office of Public Engagement, Deputy Campaign Manager on a state-legislative race, Director of “Boston Votes!” at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Head of Youth Engagement at the DNC. She previously was a research assistant at Harvard’s Sustainability, Transparency, Accountability and Research Lab and UPenn’s Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics. She traveled to Australia to conduct research with the Behavioural Economics Team for the Australian Government.