We are pleased to introduce our newest trustees, Austin Graff and Shilpi Malinowski, who are supporting the organization’s growth in the new year and beyond. Please join us in welcoming them to the DC History Center!
Austin Graff is a social media consultant, writer, travel guide, and founder of Curiosity & Connection, a social media and travel consultancy based in Washington, DC. Previously, Austin led talent brand for The Washington Post, social media and influencer marketing for International Justice Mission, the world’s largest anti-trafficking organization, and Honest Tea, America’s number one organic iced tea company. He’s currently The Washington Post’s By The Way’s D.C. local guide and contributing writer. An explorer at heart, Austin sets time aside to wander Washington, DC, where he proudly lives with his wife, daughter, and housemate. He wrote the first-ever guide to all 131 DC neighborhoods with the goal of making a big city smaller for all—tourists, transplants, and locals.
Shilpi Malinowski is an author and oral historian who tells stories about belonging. Her first book, Shaw, LeDroit Park and Bloomingdale in Washington, D.C.: An Oral History, tells the story of 70 years of life in DC’s most gentrified neighborhood through oral history, reporting, personal narrative, and photography. Her book has been incorporated into curriculums and used as a reference for both DC history and oral history students. Before immersing herself in oral history, Shilpi was a reporter whose articles have been published in The Washington Post, The New York Times, India Abroad, UrbanTurf, and The Indian American magazine. She focused her journalism work on two areas: DC neighborhoods and the Indian American diaspora. She has always been interested in how identity and community relate to each other, and in how we all make our most important decisions in life. Her current work, which is supported by fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and HumanitiesDC, involves collecting oral histories from the immigrant diaspora and from DC residents and synthesizing the stories into books. In the past, Shilpi was a high school journalism teacher, a yoga teacher, and a photographer.