About Rashad Robinson
The back story
.avif)
Rashad Robinson is a nationally recognized social justice leader, strategist and author.

For more than two decades, Rashad Robinson’s strategic campaigns, narrative interventions, and movement leadership have played a critical role in winning real change for real people.
Today, he advises foundations, nonprofits, and leaders across media, politics, government, and business as they work to improve their impact on the world, design effective campaigns, develop innovative media strategies, help their organizations grow and change, and unlock the power of communities to bring about progress.
Rashad's work and insights are regularly featured across broadcast, print, and social media, including CNN, MSNBC, BET, NPR, NewsOne, OWN, The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, Essence, The Hollywood Reporter, and The Guardian. He has also been profiled by Fast Company, Ebony, The Root, and the Stanford Social Innovation Review.
In 2020, Rashad co-led the largest advertising boycott in history: a $7 billion boycott of Facebook and Instagram. Before marriage equality was recognized nationally, he led efforts to secure same-sex wedding announcements in more than one hundred newspapers. Starting in 2015, Rashad was instrumental to launching the movement to redefine the role and work of local prosecutors, leading to dozens of subsequent reforms that measurably reduced mass incarceration and many other injustices that have been foundational to the system. He has driven campaigns to shift portrayals in media, hold corporations accountable, and build political power in communities that have long been excluded from it.
Rashad also served as co-chair of the Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorder. He won a Webby Award for Best Political Podcast in 2020 and has received numerous other honors from organizations across the social change sector. He received honorary doctorates from Georgetown University and St. Mary College of Maryland. Under his leadership, Color Of Change was featured multiple times on Fast Company’s List of Most Innovative Companies.
Rashad was a member of the inaugural cohort of Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity, a program bringing together leaders in racial justice work across the globe. He also regularly participates in international meetings focused on facing the global backlash to hard-won achievements related to LGBT rights.
For nearly 14 years, Rashad led Color Of Change, transforming it into a national force for Black political power. Prior to that, he led advocacy at GLAAD during a period of major cultural and political progress for LGBT people. Across his work, he focuses on helping institutions understand the moment they are in—and how to take strategic action that leads to real outcomes.

Learn More
For more information on Rashad’s forthcoming book, From Presence to Power (2026) click here. His other writing, interviews, and selected work can be found here.