Joined the board in 2024. Chay Rao is the Director of Strategic Communications & Public Relations at the School of Public Affairs at American University. He leads a team of communications and marketing professionals focused on raising brand awareness of the school and its faculty; promoting research, events and other initiatives developed by the school; and developing and implementing marketing and retention campaigns aimed at current and prospective students. Prior to joining American University, Chay spent more than a decade in communications roles in a variety of industry sectors, including law firms, nonprofit and for-profit companies. Early in his career, Chay worked as a teacher and journalist, and he uses the skills he learned from those roles to supervise, mentor and develop effective teams that clearly communicate and ably serve organizational goals. He is a parent of Sana ‘29.