Illana Raia

Illana Raia is a former Skadden lawyer, an occasional guest lecturer at Columbia University, and the founder of Être–a mentorship platform for motivated girls. After an early career in mergers and acquisitions, Illana was named the first Knowledge Strategy Counsel at Skadden, creating internal knowledge sites for more than thirty practices across the globe. She built the Être website with this in mind and thinks of Être as knowledge strategy for girls, curating the resources and role models girls need to change the world.

Illana has contributed to the Huffington Post, Medium, Ellevate, and Thrive Global since Être’s launch in 2016, breaking down timely topics for the younger set, and was named a Mogul Influencer in 2017. She was featured in The Balance Project Interviews in 2018 and the #WomenWhoRock photo campaign in 2019 and has been a recent guest on podcasts and radio; Illana’s journey from attorney to founder was also profiled in Forbes. Illana graduated with honors from Smith College and received her JD from the University of Chicago Law School, where she was managing editor of the Legal Forum. She lives happily in NYC and at the Jersey Shore with her husband and two children, and is unapologetically nerdy.