Rachael Cerrotti
(B. 1989, Boston, Massachusetts)
Rachael Cerrotti is an award-winning writer, educator, curator, and podcaster who works in the field of narrative nonfiction storytelling. Through an interdisciplinary practice, she explores stories rooted in the humanity of grief and inherited memory. She was the Inaugural Storyteller in Residence for USC Shoah Foundation and has been a fellow with The Witness Institute and New America. She currently produces and hosts Along The Seam, a conversational podcast about the role of the past in our present day lives. She writes a series of essays on Substack to accompany the podcast as well.
As a consultant, Rachael works with organizations, institutions and individuals on storytelling projects and community programming. She believes family history and personal narrative is necessary when building bridges within society. In 2024, she was part of a group of media-adjacent professionals who partnered with the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide to develop an Action Plan to stop hate speech worldwide. She has also extensively studied the tenants of moral leadership and is dedicated in her career and personal life to telling stories that bring people together rather than divide people apart. She currently sits on the board of Aegis Trust and Community Plate, as well as a handful of advisory committees.
In 2019, Rachael released her first podcast — We Share The Same Sky. It was the first-ever narrative podcast based on a Holocaust survivor’s testimony and tells the story of her decade-long journey to retrace her grandmother’s war story. We Share The Same Sky was listed as one of the best podcasts of the year by HuffPost, a Reader’s Pick by Vulture Magazine and as a “Show We Love” by Apple Podcasts; it is now being taught in high school classrooms around the world. Her critically-acclaimed debut memoir, also titled We Share The Same Sky, was released in August 2021. It won the Maine Literary Award, was shortlisted for the 2022 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly and was listed as one of the best books of the month by Apple Books. She recently curated this project for a traveling museum exhibition that opened in the fall of 2023 at the Florida Holocaust Museum.
Rachael’s stories have been published and featured by publications worldwide. In 2017, she was the subject of an award-winning multimedia series produced by Boston’s NPR station, titled Beyond Sides of History. Her stories have been used in curriculums developed by and for Discovery Education, USC Shoah Foundation, Echoes & Reflections, Facing History & Ourselves, Jewish Women’s Archive and others. Rachael regularly visits communities as a speaker and facilitator, and leads writing workshops and art-based programming for students of all ages. She also coaches individuals as they develop their own family archives and memoirs.
Rachael has worked in over a dozen countries and now lives in Maine with her husband and their much-adored dog and cat.