Dhaya Lakshminarayanan is a stand up comedian and storyteller. She is the 2016 winner of the Liz Carpenter Political Humor Award (previously awarded to Samantha Bee, Wanda Sykes and satirist/humorist Mark Russell) presented by the National Women’s Political Caucus. The San Francisco Bay Guardian's named her "Best of the Bay" and SF Weekly named her one of the “16 Bay Area performers to watch in 2016” . She was the grand prize winner of Comedy Central Asia's Ultimate Comedy Challenge filmed in Singapore. She hosted the premier year of "High School Quiz Show" on PBS's WGBH which won an Emmy. Dhaya has opened for Janeane Garofalo, Greg Proops, Marc Maron, and the legendary Dick Gregory. She told jokes at a tech conference before Al Gore took the stage, so technically she has opened for a Nobel Prize winner.