Karen K. Narasaki is a national authority on voting rights, census, media, immigrant rights, and race relations.  She is a consultant to the Bauman Foundation on the census. In 2014, President Obama appointed her to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Karen also serves as Chair of Comcast NBCU’s Asian American Diversity Advisory Council.

For two decades, she was president/executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice/AAJC where she helped to lead the successful effort to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act; defend federal affirmative action programs; expand federal hate crimes law to cover people with disabilities, LGBTQ individuals, and women; reduce the under count of minorities in the decennial census; increase minorities on television and defend family immigration. After leaving AAJC, she worked as a consultant on a project focused on Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder.

She was vice chair of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, chair of the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, and a board member for Common Cause, Independent Sector, National Immigration Law Center and the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights.

She also served on the U.S. Census Decennial Advisory Committee and the FCC’s Advisory Committee for Diversity in the Digital Age.