Rashawn Ray is Vice-President and Executive Director of the AIR Opportunity Fund, which is a $225 million investment in behavioral and social science research, evaluation, and technical assistance to develop solutions that mitigate the harmful effects of segregation by race and place, with a particular emphasis on education, workforce, public safety, and community health and well-being.As Professor at the University of Maryland and Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution, Ray’s research addresses the mechanisms that manufacture and maintain racial and social inequity. His academic articles have appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Science Advances, Social Science Research, American Education Research Journal, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Du Bois Review, and the Annual Review of Public Health. Ray’s books include Systemic Racism in America: Sociological Theory, Education Inequality, and Social Change (with Hoda Mahmoudi), How Families Matter: Simply Complicated Intersections of Race, Gender, and Work (with Pamela Braboy Jackson) and Race and Ethnic Relations in the 21st Century: History, Theory, Institutions, and Policy, which has been adopted over 40 times in college courses.Ray has published over 50 academic books, articles, and book chapters, and over 50 op-eds. He regularly testifies at the federal and state levels, and has written for the Washington Post, New York Times, USA Today, POLITICO, Business Insider, Newsweek, NBC News, The Guardian, The Hill, Huffington Post, and The Conversation. As the Executive Director of the Lab for Applied Social Science Research (LASSR), Ray led the development of a virtual reality training program for law enforcement. Ray serves on the Legacy Renovation Scholars Committee with the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. Previously, Ray was a RWJF Health Policy Research Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, and served on the 50th Anniversary March on Washington Planning Committee and the Commission on Racial Justice with Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. From 2018-2022, Ray served as a co-editor of Contexts Magazine: Sociology for the Public.Ray has been awarded the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Mani L. Bhaumik Award for Public Engagement with Science, the Public Understanding of Sociology Award from the American Sociological Association, the Morris Rosenberg Award for Outstanding Sociological Achievement from the DC Sociological Society, and the Outstanding Young Alumni Award from Indiana University. He was recently awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship.