Pranita Raghavan

Pranita A. Raghavan is the Chief Operations Officer. She joined ACLS in 2026 after 4 years as the Assistant Chair for Planning and Operations at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), where she served in the Chair’s office and oversaw all of NEH’s administrative operations, including grants management, budget, accounting, facilities, human resources, communications, procurement, and IT.

Prior to joining NEH, she was the General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer at the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, the largest municipal funder of arts and humanities in the United States. As part of the Executive Team, she oversaw a wide range of Agency programs and operations and led the Agency’s innovative policies and programs focused on increasing diversity, equity, inclusion, and access in the cultural community.

Prior to the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Ms. Raghavan spent several years as a civil rights attorney and mediator, leading civil rights investigations and resolutions in the employment and education sectors.

She graduated with honors from Washington & Lee University School of Law and served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Race and Ethnic Ancestry Law Journal (now The Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice). She received her B.A. with honors from The Pennsylvania State University, where she majored in Journalism and minored in Dance and Peace Studies.