Amber Scorah

Amber Scorah
Born
Canada
EducationHarvard Divinity School, The City University of New York, CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies[1]
Websitewww.amberscorah.com

Amber Scorah is a Canadian-American writer, speaker, entrepreneur and activist.

Early life

She grew up as a third-generation Jehovah's Witness in Vancouver, Canada with her parents and sister and rarely had contact with non-Jehovah's Witnesses. She forwent a formal education and career and instead went into the full-time volunteer preaching work immediately after graduating high school. When she was 22 years old she married a Jehovah's Witness elder and they moved to China to become missionaries.[2][3] Scorah began speaking out publicly about her life as a Jehovah's Witness in 2013,[3] and in 2019 published a memoir called Leaving the Witness.[4]

Education

In 2010, Scorah enrolled at the City University of New York and attended Hunter College. She took a break in 2015, then resumed her studies in spring 2019. She graduated from the CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies in 2020 with a concentration in English and the Psychology of Religion at Hunter College's program in religion.[1][5]

Advocacy

In 2015, Scorah's three-month-old son died unexpectedly on his first day of daycare in SoHo, New York. The daycare had been operating without a license and was shut down shortly after the incident. A staff member stated that she had noticed Karl kicking in his crib but she was told by a supervisor to ignore it because that's what babies do. He was found unresponsive with "blue lips" a short time later, and pronounced dead at the hospital.[6][7] Scorah had not felt ready to go back to work and leave him at daycare, and the incident drove her into activism.[8]

Scorah authored a viral[9] article for The New York Times' Motherlode blog about the incident, arguing that mandatory paid parental leave is necessary.[10] In February 2016, she attended New York City mayor Bill de Blasio's speech where he discussed his policy mandating 6 weeks' paid parental leave for non-union city employees. She called this policy change a "baby step."[11] In August 2016, Scorah delivered petitions to both the Trump and Clinton presidential campaigns pushing for federally mandated paid leave. Both politicians have spoken favorably of the concept. Donald Trump pitched a plan for how he could institute 6 weeks' paid parental leave. Scorah says this is progress but it's not enough.[12] In 2017 CNN correspondent Clare Sebastian named Amber as her "hero" for "...her bravery in turning such a tragic event into public and heartfelt campaign."[13] That same year Brooklyn Magazine named her one of their top "100 Influencers in Brooklyn Culture" for her parental leave advocacy.[14]

In 2020, Scorah co-founded Lioness, an organization that "help[s] people navigate the process of speaking out against workplace mistreatment."[15] She also founded Psst.org, a website where people can submit encrypted whisteblowing reports about their employers.[16]

Publications

Books

  • Scorah, Amber (2019). Leaving the Witness: Exiting Religion And Finding A Life. Viking Press. ISBN 9780735222540.

Podcasts

References

  1. ^ a b "Cuny Events: Book Talk with Amber Scorah--Leaving the Witness". The City University of New York.
  2. ^ Martin, Rachel (2019-06-05). 'Leaving The Witness': The End Of The World As She Knew It, Upon Losing Her Religion. Morning Edition. NPR.
  3. ^ a b Scorah, Amber (2013-02-01). "Leaving the Witness: A Preacher Finds Freedom to Think in Totalitarian China". The Believer Magazine.
  4. ^ Gaddini, Katie (December 15, 2019). "Starting Over: On Amber Scorah's "Leaving the Witness"". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 4 February 2026.
  5. ^ "CUNY BA Student Amber Scorah Publishes Memoir". 2019-06-14. Retrieved 2019-11-16.
  6. ^ Southall, Ashley (2015-07-14). "Infant at Unlicensed Day Care Is Taken to a Hospital and Dies". The New York Times: 17.
  7. ^ Yee, Vivian (2015-07-15). "Unlicensed SoHo Day Care Is Shut After Death of Infant Boy". The New York Times: 23.
  8. ^ Scorah, Amber (2015-11-15). "A Baby Dies at Day Care, and a Mother Asks Why She Had to Leave Him So Soon". The New York Times. Motherlode. Retrieved 2019-11-13.
  9. ^ Morgan, C. E. (1 July 2019), "When Leaving a Religion Is Like Abandoning a Cult", The New York Times, Many readers know Scorah through her viral article in The New York Times about the death of her son on his first day of day care.
  10. ^ Kim, Eun Kyung (2015-11-19). "How Amber Scorah, whose baby died in daycare, is turning heartbreak into a crusade". Today. Retrieved 2019-11-14.
  11. ^ DURKIN, ERIN (2016-02-03). "Parents of baby who died in SoHo daycare will attend Mayor de Blasio's speech to support paid parental leave". New York Daily News. Retrieved 2019-11-15.
  12. ^ Sebastian, Clare (2017-03-08). "The fight for paid family leave". CNN.
  13. ^ "CNN correspondents and anchors reveal their heroes". CNN. 2017-03-31. Retrieved 2019-11-14.
  14. ^ Rinn, Natalie (13 March 2017). "Brooklyn 100 Influencer: Amber Scorah, Activist for Paid Parental Leave". Brooklyn Magazine.
  15. ^ Griffith, Erin (5 June 2021). "How the World Learns About Bosses Behaving Badly". The New York Times.
  16. ^ Turk, Victoria (May 19, 2025). "For Tech Whistleblowers, There's Safety in Numbers". Wired. Retrieved 4 February 2026.
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