Award Profile
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Gibson Kamau Kuria
Tags Share Gibson Kamau Kuria was once detained in a maximum-security prison for nearly a year. His crime? Representing and defending Wanyiri Kihoro, a former political prisoner who himself had been detained and abused in a torture chamber. Selfless courage has always characterized Kuria, a leading human rights attorney who has spent his professional life…
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Zbigniew Bujak
Tags Share Lech Walesa has called Zbigniew Bujak “One of the most outstanding and bravest fighters for citizens’ rights and Solidarity.” Trained as an electrical technician and soldier, Bujak joined the opposition in 1978 while he was working at a tractor factory. After organizing a strike in 1980, Bujak became the leader of the Warsaw…
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Adam Michnik
Tags Share Despite repeated imprisonments and attempts to expel him from his country, Adam Michnik never stopped speaking against communist rule in Poland. Michnik began his human rights work in the 1960s, participating in protests in 1968 that led to his expulsion from the University of Warsaw and a yearlong stint in jail. Despite these…
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Allan Boesak
Tags Share Reverend Allan Boesak and Beyers Naude fought tenaciously to end apartheid in South Africa. In 1981, Boesak was elected chairman of the Alliance of Black Reformed Christians in Southern Africa. During the 1982 World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) meeting in Canada, Boesak introduced a motion requesting that WARC declare apartheid heresy. The…
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Father Jerzy Popieluszko
Tags Share Father Jerzy Popieluszko’s introduction to the priesthood was counterintuitive. He spent several years in the a Polish special forces unit commissioned specifically to deter young Polish men from entering the priesthood, part of the larger tension in Communist Poland between the open expression of religion and Communism’s animosity towards organized faith. Unlike many…
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Beyers Naude
Tags Share Reverend Allan Boesak and Beyers Naude fought tenaciously to end apartheid in South Africa. Beyers Naude was a South African cleric and the leading Afrikaner anti-apartheid activist, who was routinely placed under severe house arrest, monitored by police surveillance, and imprisoned due to his vocal opposition to apartheid. Despite continued legal persecution and…
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CoMadres
Tags Share CoMadres traces its origins to the late 1970s, when a number of women’s groups in El Salvador sought the same truth: the whereabouts of relatives who had gone missing or been assassinated during their nation’s civil war. When Archbishop Oscar Romero encouraged them to unite behind a single banner, CoMadres was born. In…
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Dr. Anthony Fauci
Tags Share Dr. Anthony Fauci was appointed director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in 1984. He oversees an extensive portfolio of basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose, and treat established infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis, and malaria, emerging diseases such as Ebola and Zika,…
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Dolores Huerta
Tags Share Dolores Huerta is a labor leader and community organizer who has worked to promote civil rights and social justice for over 50 years. In 1962, she and Cesar Chavez founded the United Farm Workers union; she served as vice president and played a critical role in many of the union’s accomplishments for four…
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Colin Kaepernick
Tags Share Colin Kaepernick is a professional athlete and human rights activist, known for protesting police violence and racialized systemic oppression by taking a knee rather than standing during the playing of the national anthem while he was the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers. In 2016 he co-founded the Know Your Rights Camp (KYRC),…
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Dan Schulman
Tags Share As president and CEO of PayPal, Dan Schulman is focused on democratizing and transforming financial services and e-commerce to improve the financial health of billions of people and businesses around the world. Under his leadership, PayPal has been named one of the top companies on JUST Capital and Forbes’ list of the JUST…
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Dan Springer
Tags Share Dan Springer is the CEO of DocuSign, the company that pioneered e-signature and now helps organizations to automate their entire agreement process. Under Dan’s leadership, the company is also committing money, time and other resources to help preserve the world’s forests—through DocuSign for Forests, and other initiatives under the ‘DocuSign IMPACT’ umbrella. Dan…
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