Rinku Sen
Executive Director, Applied Research CenterMovement: Racial Justice
After immigrating from India at the age of five, Rinku Sen spent her childhood and adolescence trying to figure out how to fit in among her American peers. She found her calling in college as an organizer for social justice. Rinku continues her activism, but she is also a journalist who promotes the importance of racial justice through storytelling, using new technology to reach a vast constituency. “Our biggest challenge is to help Americans recognize that the structures of our society, rather than individual prejudice, now generate most racial disparity and division,” says Rinku. “I work to provide a home for the racial justice movement where we can gather to update our ideas, tell our stories, and drive the nation to adopt new rules.” Through her books—The Accidental American: Immigration and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization (2008), about an immigrant leader’s efforts to renew New York’s prosperity and uphold human rights for all, and Stir It Up: Lessons in Community Organizing (2003)—Rinku has reached thousands of readers and has begun blending the currently disparate movements of racial justice, immigrant rights, and fair globalization. She aims to show millions of Americans how to reform our immigration system and encourage a more inclusive society where no one is vilified as an “other.”
Rinku is president of Applied Research Center, a racial justice think tank that conducts research to expose inequities; promotes its solutions by training journalists, organizers, and elected officials; encourages people to learn about racial justice through new media; and publishes ColorLines, a national magazine on race and politics. In 2008, ARC released the “Compact for Racial Justice,” a proactive framework and policy platform that has initiated online and offline conversations with activists in thousands of workplaces, congregations, schools and organizations. For ten years, Rinku was co-director of the Center for Third World Organizing. In 2008, she won the Progressive Leadership Award from Citizen Action of New York and was named one of Utne Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World.” She earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in women’s studies from Brown University.
