Samina Ali is an award-winning author, activist and cultural commentator. Her debut novel, Madras on Rainy Days (Farrar, Straus, Giroux), was the winner of France’s prestigious Prix Premier Roman Etranger Award and a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award in Fiction. The book, about a young woman’s arranged marriage and political awakening, was partly inspired by Samina’s real-life experience growing up bi-culturally in Hyderabad, India and St. Paul, Minnesota.

At the heart of Samina’s work is her belief in personal narrative as a vital force for achieving women’s individual and political freedom – and in the power of new and traditional media as platforms for social transformation. As the curator of the groundbreaking, critically acclaimed virtual exhibition, Muslima: Muslim Women’s Art & Voices, Samina illuminated the multi-dimensional realities of women’s lives to challenge fears and misconceptions of Muslims and Islam within and beyond Muslim communities.

Weaving her personal story with a passionate appeal for women’s equality and justice, Samina’s current project is an account of her near-death experience delivering her firstborn and an unsparing look at gender bias and the crisis of preventable maternal deaths in one of the most advanced healthcare systems in the world. In this memoir-in-progress, Samina describes how she defied the odds by boldly charting her own path to recovery, from relearning to walk alongside her son’s first steps, to retraining her mind — word by word — to write what would become her debut novel.

Samina has spoken extensively at a wide range of universities, from Harvard and Yale Universities to community colleges, as well as at other institutions worldwide, including as a cultural ambassador for the U.S. State Department, a Master Teacher for the Mama Gena School of Womanly Arts and a featured presenter at the Nobel Women’s Initiative 2017 International Conference. The recipient of fiction awards from the Rona Jaffe Foundation and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, she has been featured in The Economist, The Guardian, Vogue, National Public Radio (NPR) and elsewhere. A regular contributor to The Huffington Post and Daily Beast, she has written for The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications.

Never one to say no to a challenge, Samina defied the odds — again — and gave birth to a second child. She now lives happily with her husband, son and daughter in California.

A longtime human rights advocate and former Amnesty International Legal Advisor, Karima Bennoune’s most recent book — published by W.W. Norton & Company — is entitled Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism.

The book addresses resistance to fundamentalism in Muslim majority contexts, and is based on interviews she conducted with nearly 300 people in almost 30 countries, including Afghanistan, Egypt, Israel/Palestine, Mali, Niger and Russia. It answers the question often posed in the West: “Where are the Muslims who speak out?” Bennoune finds that they are everywhere – but those who peacefully challenge extremism are not usually given the microphone. Increasingly frustrated with the stagnant, politicized public dialogue about the “clash of civilizations,” Bennoune set out on an epic journey to change the conversation.

Bennoune currently serves as a professor of international law and Martin Luther King, Jr. Research Scholar at the University of California–Davis School of Law. She grew up in Algeria and the United States.

2011 Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist, trained social worker and women’s rights advocate.

She currently serves as Executive Director of the Women, Peace and Security Program at the Earth Institute at Columbia University and is the founder and current President of the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa, the founding head of the Liberia Reconciliation Initiative, as well as co-founder and former Executive Director of Women Peace and Security Network Africa (WIPSEN-A). She is also a founding member and former Liberian Coordinator of Women in Peacebuilding Network/West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WIPNET/WANEP). She travels internationally to advocate for human rights and peace & security.

Ms. Gbowee’s leadership of the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace – which brought together Christian and Muslim women in a nonviolent movement that played a pivotal role in ending Liberia’s civil war in 2003 – is chronicled in her memoir, Mighty Be Our Powers, and in the award-winning documentary, Pray the Devil Back to Hell. Ms. Gbowee holds an M.A. in Conflict Transformation from Eastern Mennonite University (Harrisonburg, VA), and a Doctor of Laws (LLD) honoris causa from Rhodes University in South Africa and the University of Alberta in Canada.

Ms. Gbowee advises numerous organizations working for peace, women’s rights, youth, and sustainable development, and has held distinguished fellowships at Barnard College and Union Theologi­cal Seminary. In 2016, Ms. Gbowee was awarded the Lifetime Africa Achievement Prize (LAAP) for Peace in Africa by the Millennium Excellence Foundation. Ms. Gbowee serves as a Sustainable Development Goals Advocate for the United Nations and as a Member of the World Refugee Council. In 2017, Ms. Gbowee was selected by the United Nations Secretary General to serve as a Member of United Nations Secretary-General’s High Level Advisory Board on Mediation. In 2018, she was appointed to the Gender Equality Advisory Council Secretariat for Canada’s G7 Presidency.

Leymah is the proud mother of eight children.

Mona Haydar is a young Syrian-American Muslim who spent her 20’s as a performance poet. In 2015 she gained national and international press for her and her husband’s “Ask A Muslim” project- a booth that invited dialogue and questions in the wake of the Paris and San Bernardino terrorist attacks. The Boston Globe, NPR, People Magazine, The New York Times and others all covered the project and the collaborations that followed. In 2017 she broke into the hip hop music scene with Hijabi (Wrap My Hijab) whose video- featuring Haydar seven months pregnant with her second son- went viral. Billboard Magazine named Haydar’s track one of the top feminist anthems of all time (alongside hits by icons Beyoncé, Christina Aguilera, and M.I.A).

Mona’s first EP, BARBARICAN, dropped in 2018 and took aim at global patriarchy, orientalism, immigration policy, white supremacy, and suicide. That same year, she earned her Masters Degree in Theology, focusing on Christian Ethics, from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. AMERICAN, her most recent track, helps re-define the debate about who is an American, and calls out ICE and our current president.

For the last four years, Mona has been performing her poetry and music, leading writing and activism workshops, and speaking at universities and colleges about art, Islam, feminism, hip hop, theology, and inter-faith dialogue. She has performed internationally, spoken at churches, synagogues and conferences, and has been invited to speak at such institutions as Smith College, MIT, Princeton, UC Berkeley and the Parliament of World Religions.

Robi is the Israeli spokesperson and Director of International Relations for the Parents Circle – Families Forum (PCFF), a group of 600 Israeli and Palestinian families who have lost close family members to the conflict and who work together for reconciliation and a just resolution to the conflict. Robi’s son, David, was killed by a Palestinian sniper in March of 2002 while he was guarding a checkpoint near a settlement during his army reserve service. Since becoming active in the Parents Circle, Robi has spoken around the world, including to thousands of Israelis and Palestinians, to demand that reconciliation be a part of any peace agreement. Robi was named as a 2015 Woman of Impact by Women in the World. In 2014, Robi was selected by the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice as one of four Women PeaceMakers. She is the protagonist featured in the documentary, One Day after Peace. She regularly contributes to The Forward and Huffington Post, and has spoken at various Women in the World events, Royal Albert Hall with Marcus Mumford, and European, Spanish and Canadian Parliament.