Dayo Olopade is a Nigerian-American journalist. She writes regularly about American politics and culture, including profiles, breaking news, and policy analysis. As a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation, she researches the connection between disruptive technology and human development.
She began her career at The New Republic, where she covered the 2008 presidential primaries and general election. She covered the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency as Washington correspondent for The Root. She currently reports for The Daily Beast and makes occasional appearances on television and radio. Her work has also appeared in print and online at The American Prospect, The Nation, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Democracy, Foreign Policy and The Washington Post.
Born and raised in Chicago, Dayo holds degrees in Literature and in African Studies from Yale University, where she edited the Yale Literary Magazine and joined the first class of Yale Journalism Scholars.
You can follow Dayo here, at The Daily Beast, or on Twitter. Email her here.
Hi Dayo,
I just wondered, has anyone ever told you that your name has a meaning in Japanese? As you may know, Japanese has at least six forms of the verb “is”, ranging from the very polite “de gozaimasu” all the way down to the basic, informal “da”, which is what you use when talking to friends or family.
Meanwhile, “yo” is an emphatic, roughly equivalent to an exclamation point. So when reading your work, I often think to myself (I live in Tokyo) “So dayo!”, which translates roughly to “Yeah, that’s the way it is!”
Anyway, what a great name for a journalist. Keep it up, I love your stuff.
Tom Donahue