Timothy F. Ryan

Valarie Kaur is a renowned civil rights leader, lawyer, best-selling author, award-winning filmmaker, educator, innovator and celebrated prophetic voice. She leads the Revolutionary Love Project to reclaim love as a force for justice.

Kaur burst into American consciousness in the wake of the 2016 election when her Watch Night Service address went viral with 40 million views worldwide. Her question “Is this the darkness of the tomb – or the darkness of the womb?” reframed the political moment and became a mantra for people fighting for change.

In the last twenty years, Kaur has won policy change on multiple fronts – hate crimes, racial profiling, immigration detention, solitary confinement, Internet freedom and more. She founded Groundswell Movement, Faithful Internet and the Yale Visual Law Project to inspire and equip advocates at the intersection of spirituality, storytelling and justice. Kaur has been a regular TV commentator on MSNBC and contributor to CNN, NPR, PBS, the Hill, Huffington Post and the Washington Post.

A daughter of Sikh farmers in California’s heartland, Kaur earned degrees at Stanford University, Harvard Divinity School, and Yale Law School. Her debut book, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love, was released in 2020 and expands on her blockbuster TED Talk.