ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Sarah Lewis is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities and Associate Professor of African
and African American Studies at Harvard University. She is the founder of Vision & Justice, a leading
publishing and research initiative that serves as a key organizer, partner, and resource for artists, scholars, and
leaders seeking to examine the foundational role of visual culture in America’s representational democracy.
Lewis is also known for her landmark work on creativity and the gift of failure for innovation.
She has authored and edited over 60 publications including the award-winning book, The Unseen Truth: When
Race Changed Sight in America (Harvard University Press, 2024); the bestseller, The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of
Failure, and the Search for Mastery (Simon & Schuster, 2014); and the award-winning volumes Carrie Mae Weems
(MIT Press, 2021) and “Vision & Justice” (Aperture, 2016), taught widely in universities in the United States
and abroad and made required reading for incoming first-year students at New York University Tisch School
of the Arts.
A frequent speaker at universities and conferences, her mainstage TED talk, Embrace the Near Win, has
received 3.1 million views. She has delivered keynotes, talks and commencement addresses for many
universities and organizations. As founder of Vision & Justice, Lewis has organized landmark convenings and
founded a Vision & Justice Book Series, launched in partnership with Aperture. Her writing has been
published in the New Yorker, The New York Times, Artforum, and the New York Review of Books, and her work has
been the subject of profiles from Vogue to The Boston Globe to The New York Times.