Mehrsa Baradaran is a Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. She writes and teaches about banking law, financial inclusion, inequality, and the racial wealth gap. Her scholarship includes the books How the Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation, and the Threat to Democracy and The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap, both published by the Harvard University Press and the forthcoming, The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and The Looting of America, published by Norton Liveright. The Color of Money was awarded the Best Book of the Year by the Urban Affairs Association, the PROSE Award Honorable Mention in the Business, Finance & Management category, and was the Georgia Author of the Year in history/biography. She has been recognized for her career contributions and has been awarded the “Difference Maker” award by the Urban League and recognized for her “Outstanding Contributions to the Legal Profession” by the NYU Black Alumni Association.
Her academic articles have appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the NYU Law Review, the Vanderbilt Law Review, the Washington University Law Review, the Emory Law Review and other top journals. Her work has led to important public conversations about the racial wealth gap, financial inclusion, and public banking. She has written numerous influential policy proposals and white papers that have drawn the interest of lawmakers and the public. She serves on the board of directors of several non-profits such as the American Prospect and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and on advisory councils of top progressive think tanks initiatives and projects focused on issues related to racial equity and financial inclusion. Baradaran was selected by the Biden-Harris administration as a member of two Presidential Transition agency review teams directing policy agendas and advising with top agency personnel in the U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve, FDIC, OCC, SEC, and CFTC. Baradaran was fully vetted as a candidate for the position of Comptroller of the Currency and was the candidate of the Progressive caucus, the AFL-CIO, the Congressional Black Caucus, and a consortium of racial and climate justice groups who wrote public letters of support.
Baradaran and her work have been profiled by The Wall Street Journal, WIRED, The New York Times, and other media outlets. Baradaran was spotlighted as the top 15 innovators at the forefront of trying to reinvent our economic system” in the October 2019 Fast Company Feature issue, “The New Capitalism.” She was a core advisor on the Times’ #1619 project and contributed several articles. She appears frequently as commentator and contributor to television and radio shows on MSNBC, NPR Radio, PBS NewsHour, CNN, and other network television, as well as through a variety of social media.
Baradaran immigrated to the United States at the age of 9 as a refugee from Iran where her parents were persecuted and imprisoned for their political activism. The economic and social precarity that defined her childhood have motivated her work and advocacy.
