Eboo Patel
Founder and Executive Director, Interfaith Youth CoreMovement: Interfaith Youth Cooperation
Dr. Ebrahim "Eboo" Patel believes that a central question of the 21st century is how young people from different religions will interact: will they build bombs of destruction or bridges of cooperation? The organization he founded in 2002, Interfaith Youth Core, works to make interfaith cooperation a social norm by training a generation of young interfaith leaders as bridge-builders. Eboo and IFYC focus on changing public discourse on religion from one of inevitable conflict to one of religious pluralism; transforming college campuses into models of interfaith cooperation; and nurturing and connecting interfaith leaders.
Named by US News & World Report as one of America’s Best Leaders of 2009, Eboo is author of the award-winning book Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation, and a regular contributor to National Public Radio and CNN. He is a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University. Eboo serves on the Religious Advisory Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations, on the board of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and on the National Committee of the Aga Khan Foundation USA. He has spoken at the TED Conference, the Clinton Global Initiative, the Nobel Peace Prize Forum, and universities around the world. Eboo is a Young Global Leader in the World Economic Forum and an Ashoka Fellow. He was named by Islamica Magazine as one of ten young Muslim visionaries shaping Islam in America and along with IFYC was honored with the Roosevelt Institute’s Freedom of Worship Medal in 2009.
