Sameer Rao is Senior Manager of UpSurge Communications at the Greater Baltimore Committee, where he leads newsletters, social media, and strategic marketing and communications efforts that elevate the Baltimore Region’s innovation economy. In this role, he helps shape how UpSurge’s work is communicated across founders, investors, partners, and the broader public, using multiplatform storytelling to strengthen visibility for the region’s tech and entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Rao joined GBC after several years reporting on Baltimore’s startup, business, and civic landscape, bringing with him a deep understanding of UpSurge’s mission, evolution, and role in regional ecosystem building. Over the last four years, he covered Baltimore and peer markets through journalism focused on entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic development, building strong working knowledge of the region’s founders, funders, accelerators, and support organizations. That experience now informs his work helping tell Baltimore’s innovation story with clarity, context, and credibility.
Before joining GBC, Rao served as Market Editor for Technical.ly in Baltimore and Washington, where he produced, assigned, and edited eight or more stories each week across two regions and helped grow newsletter subscriptions by 16 percent in Washington and 3 percent in Maryland/Baltimore. He developed editorial strategy and fact-checking processes, cultivated partnerships with media and ecosystem leaders, and reported on major issues affecting the innovation economy, including public-sector tech programs, startup ecosystem shifts, and leadership changes at key institutions.
Earlier in his career, Rao worked as a reporter at Law360, The Baltimore Sun, and Colorlines, covering law, access to justice, arts, entertainment, politics, and culture. At The Baltimore Sun, he contributed to the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh’s financial misconduct. Across his journalism career, he has also written for outlets including Inc., The Guardian US, VICE, The Village Voice, and Stereogum.
Rao brings deep expertise in written communications, editorial strategy, newsletter development, social media, and audience engagement, along with fluency in AP style, content management systems, analytics tools, and visual content development. He is a fellow in Atlantik-Brücke’s New Bridge Program and has held multiple national leadership roles with the Asian American Journalists Association.