Rayan Semery-Palumbo is a policy economist and writer. He completed his DPhil in Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government in 2025.

Rayan is the National Director of Strategy & Narrative for the Living Wage For All Coalition, where he leads national campaigns to raise wages to a true living wage. He is a Fellow at the Economic Security Project, where he works on worker-centered responses to AI and automation. He is a contributing author of the forthcoming book What Has Democracy Done For Me Lately? (The New Press, 2026).

His doctoral research examined meritocracy in American political discourse, analyzing nearly 150 years of political texts to understand how ideas about effort, responsibility, and contribution shape policy debates around fairness and economic justice.

Rayan grew up in poverty and experienced homelessness as a child in Arizona. He graduated from Yale University and earned both an MPhil in Politics (Comparative Government) and a DPhil in Public Policy & Economics at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and lives in New York City.

Rayan writes at American Dreams & Nightmares (rayansemerypalumbo.com).