Speakers

Before working at the White House, Sarah was chief speechwriter for Hillary Clinton during her 2008 presidential primary campaign. She then joined the Obama campaign, serving as a senior speechwriter for then-Senator Obama. Prior to the Clinton and Obama campaigns, Sarah served as deputy chief speechwriter for Senator John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, deputy chief speechwriter for General Wesley Clark’s primary campaign, and a speechwriter for Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa. Sarah was also a lawyer at the Washington, DC office of WilmerHale and is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

Sarah has been profiled in The Washington Post, People.com, The Boston Globe, and The Guardian; interviewed on The Today Show, Morning Joe, Amanpour & Co., and NPR; and featured in The Forward as one of 50 Jews who impacted American life in 2016 and 2019.

Sarah is also the author of Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life — in Judaism (After Finally Choosing to Look There) which was a finalist for two National Jewish Book Awards and for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. Michelle Obama tweeted about Sarah’s book saying, “Sarah Hurwitz is a brilliant writer with a big heart and a kind soul — and I’m sure Here All Along will reflect her thoughtfulness and eloquence, which I depended on for so many years. I’m so proud of you, Sarah, for sharing your journey and your voice with the world!”

Sarah offers audiences a behind-the-scenes look at life in the White House working for one of the most inspiring and influential women in the world. She also shares her advice on effective storytelling, providing concrete tips for how to create a moving, persuasive narrative that breaks through the noise and has a lasting impact.

Dr. Boyd is especially well known as a commentator, appearing in numerous documentaries, including the award-winning The Last Dance (ESPN/Netflix, 2020)—winner of the Emmy Award for “Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series”—and Twenty Feet From Stardom (2013)—winner of the Academy Award for “Best Documentary Feature” and the Grammy Award for “Best Music Film.” Other recent documentary appearances include, Ken Burns’ Muhammad Ali (PBS, 2021), Blood Brothers: Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali (Netflix, 2021) Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James (Showtime, 2021), Vick (“30 for 30” ESPN, 2020) The Movies (CNN, 2019), Dennis Rodman: For Better or Worse (“30 For 30” ESPN, 2019), I Am Richard Pryor (Paramount Network/Comedy Central, 2019) Sammy Davis, Jr.: I Gotta Be Me (“American Masters”/PBS, 2019), The Nineties and The History of Comedy (CNN, 2017) among numerous others. Dr. Boyd was a Consultant on the Sony Pictures Animation feature film Vivo (2021), Executive Producer of the Netflix documentary, At All Costs: Life Inside AAU Basketball (2016), and writer/producer on the Paramount Pictures celebrated cult classic film The Wood (1999). He has written over one hundred articles, essays, reviews, and other forms of commentary, with his work having appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, ESPN, and Chicago Tribune, among other publications. Dr. Boyd’s seven books include, The Notorious Ph.D’s Guide to the Super Fly 70s, Young Black Rich and Famous, The New H.N.I.C, and Am I Black Enough For You.

Dr. Borja researches and teaches about religion, migration, race, ethnicity, and politics in the United States and the Pacific World, with special attention to how Asian American religious beliefs and practices have developed in the context of pluralism and the modern American state. Her book, Follow the New Way: Hmong Refugee Resettlement Policy and Hmong Religious Change (forthcoming, Harvard University Press) draws on oral history and archival research to investigate the religious dimensions of American refugee care—how governments have expanded capacity through partnerships with religious organizations and how refugee policies have shaped the religious lives of refugees. Animating her work is a deep fascination with how new religious diversity has complicated old practices of governance and, in turn, how Americans have attempted to govern new religious diversity.

Her research appears in Shaped by the State: Toward a New Political History of the Twentieth Century, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Race in American History, The Oral History Review, The Review of Faith and International Affairs, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The American Historian, Wiley Blackwell’s Companion to American Religious History, and The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Medicine, and Health. She has also shared her research in The Washington Post, Sojourners, Religion Dispatches, and Spark. She contributes regularly to the religious history blog Anxious Bench, and her lecture on Southeast Asian refugees was featured on C-SPAN’s “Lectures in American History.” 

An active public scholar, Dr. Borja is a senior advisor to Religion and Resettlement Project, a three-year national project led by Princeton University’s Office of Religious Life and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops aiming to improve understanding of the role that religion plays in the lives of refugees as they resettle in the United States. An expert on anti-Asian racism during the Covid-19 pandemic, she is the lead investigator of the Virulent Hate Project and has contributed research to Stop AAPI Hate. She is part of a national research team that received support from the Louisville Institute to study Filipino American theology and religious life during the Covid-19 pandemic. Finally, she serves as an advisor to the Vietnamese Boat People project, the COVID-19 Community Oral History Project at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and the Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton University.

Dr. Borja was named a 2021-2022 Research and Community Impact Fellow with the Anti-Racism Collaborative at the National Center for Institutional Diversity, a 2020-20201 Faculty Fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University, and a 2018-2019 Young Scholar in American Religion. Her research and writing have been supported by grants from the Donia Center for Human Rights; Poverty Solutions and the Center for Social Solutions; the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative; the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life; the Immigration History Research Center; and the Center for the Study of World Religions. She was awarded the ACLS/Mellon and Charlotte Newcombe fellowships.

She is a National Research Fellow with the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture, and she currently serves on the steering committee for the North American Religions unit in the American Academy of Religion.