Sapreet Kaur Saluja, [1] usually known as Sapreet Kaur[ citation needed ], (born on May 7, 1976) is an American civil rights activist who served as the executive director of the Sikh Coalition in the United States from 2009 to 2017. [2] In January 2013, she became the first Sikh to speak at a Presidential Inaugural Prayer Service in Washington D.C. [3]
Saluja was born and raised in central New Jersey where her parents had arrived from Punjab in the 1960s. [4] [5] She went to the Sikh-oriented Khalsa School in Bridgewater, New Jersey, regularly attending Camp Chardi Kala in the summer months. In 1998, she graduated in marketing and international business at New York University's Stern School of Business. [6]
After graduating, Kaur served as a volunteer in the United States Peace Corps in Kenya and Uganda (1998–2001), creating local programs in the areas of conservation, conflict resolution and organizational development. Thereafter she worked in management positions at Coach, Inc. and at Teach for America where she developed human capital leadership strategies for work aimed at overcoming inequity in education. [7]
In 2007, Kaur became a member of the board of directors of the Sikh Coalition where she was appointed executive director in 2009. Since 2014, she has served as international commissioner for the National Board of Directors. [8] On her appointment as executive director, Kaur became the first woman to have led a Sikh civil rights organization in the United States. In her own words, her goal has been to bring the full force of all our program areas, partner organizations and volunteers across the country to defend the rights of Sikhs to fearlessly practice our faith". [5]
Kaur is serving as a board member of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (2008–2014) and is a member of the Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation board of directors. [8]
Carol Bellamy is an American nonprofit executive and former politician. She is chair of the board of the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF). Previously, she was director of the Peace Corps, executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and president and CEO of World Learning. She is also the chair of children's rights advocacy organization ECPAT International, working to end the sexual exploitation of children. After three terms in the New York State Senate, she was the first woman to be elected to any citywide office in NYC as President of the New York City Council, a position she held until her unsuccessful bid for Mayor of New York in 1985; she was the second to last person to hold this position.
Charlotte Anne Bunch is an American feminist author and organizer in women's rights and human rights movements. Bunch is currently the founding director and senior scholar at the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She is also a distinguished professor in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers.
Sherrie Rollins Westin is an American businesswoman. She is the CEO of Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization that produces the television series Sesame Street.
American Sikhs form the country's sixth-largest religious group. While the U.S. Census does not ask about religion, 70,697 Americans declared Sikh as their ethnicity in the 2020 census. The U.S. Census Bureau cites the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey's estimate of the adult Sikh American population at 78,000. The Pew Research Center estimated the Sikh American adult population to be 140,000 and the total population at 200,000 in 2012 while the World Religion Database at Boston University estimated the American Sikh population to be at 280,000 in 2012. Sikh organizations like the Sikh Coalition and American Sikh Congressional Caucus estimate the Sikh American population to be as high as 1,000,000, but do not provide any sources for these figures; 500,000 nevertheless remains the most cited Sikh American population size. With 1% of Asian Americans being Sikh, and 90.7% of Sikh Americans being Asian American, the American Sikh population can be estimated at around 200,000–300,000 in 2021. The largest Sikh populations in the U.S. are found in California (52%), New York (11%), and Washington (6%).
Janet Murguía is an American civil rights activist in the United States. She is president of UnidosUS, formerly National Council of La Raza (NCLR), a Hispanic advocacy organization. Her twin sister Mary and elder brother Carlos are both federal judges.
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is an American coalition of more than 240 national civil and human rights organizations and acts as an umbrella group for American civil and human rights. Founded as the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) in 1950 by civil rights activists Arnold Aronson, A. Philip Randolph, and Roy Wilkins, the coalition has focused on issues ranging from educational equity to justice reform to voting rights.
Henrietta Holsman Fore is an American public health and international development executive who was the executive director of UNICEF till January 2022. Fore is chairman and CEO of Holsman International, a management, investment, and advisory services company. She served in three presidential appointments under President George W. Bush: Fore was the first woman Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance, the 11th Under Secretary of Management in the Department of State, and the 37th Director of the United States Mint in the U.S. Department of Treasury. She was the presidential appointee for President George H. W. Bush at the United States Agency for International Development.
Eleanor Mary Josaitis was an American civil rights activist and the co-founder of Focus: HOPE, an organization fighting racism and poverty. Michigan governor Rick Snyder referred to her as a "tireless and devoted leader".
Lynn Forester, Lady de Rothschild is an American-British businesswoman who is the chair of E.L. Rothschild, a holding company she owns.
Catherine Mary Russell is an American attorney and political adviser who is the executive director of UNICEF as of 2022. Russell previously served as Director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, United States Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues, and Chief of Staff to then-Second Lady of the United States Jill Biden.
The Peace Corps is an independent agency and program of the United States government that trains and deploys volunteers to provide international development assistance. It was established in March 1961 by an executive order (10924) of President John F. Kennedy and authorized by Congress the following September by the Peace Corps Act.
Kumi Naidoo is a human rights and climate justice activist. He was International Executive Director of Greenpeace International and Secretary General of Amnesty International. Naidoo served as the Secretary-General of CIVICUS, the international alliance for citizen participation, from 1998 to 2008. As a fifteen-year old, he organised students in school boycotts against the apartheid regime and its educational system in South Africa. Naidoo's activism went from neighbourhood organising and community youth work to civil disobedience with mass mobilisations against the white controlled apartheid government. Naidoo is a co-founder of the Helping Hands Youth Organisation. He has written about his activism in this period in his memoirs titled Letters to My Mother: The Making of a Troublemaker. In the book Naidoo recounts the day of his mother's suicide when he was just 15 and how it became a catalyst for his journey into radical action against the Nationalist Party's apartheid regime.
Mary Kerry Kennedy is an American lawyer, author, and human rights activist. She is a daughter of former United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy, and a niece of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy and former U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy.
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Carolyn "Carrie" Hessler-Radelet is the President & CEO of Global Communities. In 2017, she served as the President & CEO of Project Concern International (PCI), a San Diego–based international development and humanitarian assistance organization, and spearheaded the merger of the organization with the Silver Spring, Maryland–based Global Communities in 2020. Prior to leading PCI, Carrie was the 19th director of the Peace Corps, from 2014 to 2017. She was the Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer of the Peace Corps from April 2010 to December 2015, serving as Acting Peace Corps Director from September 2012 until June 2014 when she was elevated to Director. She resigned on January 20, 2017, to join Project Concern International (PCI) as its President & CEO.
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Rebecca A. Hare Cokley is an American disability rights activist and public speaker who is currently the first U.S. Disability Rights Program Officer for the Ford Foundation. Prior to joining Ford, Cokley was the founding director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress. During the Obama administration, Cokley served as the executive director of the National Council on Disability.
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