Eboo Patel, founder and Executive Director of Interfaith Youth Core

Eboo Patel is the founder and Executive Director of Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based international nonprofit working to build mutual respect and pluralism among religiously diverse young people by empowering them to work together to serve others. Eboo Patel is the founder and Executive Director of Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based international nonprofit working to build mutual respect and pluralism among religiously diverse young people by empowering them to work together to serve others. He lectures worldwide on youth and religion and was a keynote speaker at the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Forum.

Patel is the author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation. Patel holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship. He writes "The Faith Divide", a featured blog on religion for The Washington Post.

He is an Ashoka Fellow, part of a select group of social entrepreneurs whose ideas are changing the world. Patel was named by Islamica Magazine as one of ten young Muslim visionaries shaping Islam in America and was chosen by Harvard's Kennedy School Review as one of five future policy leaders to watch.

Read Patel's open letter to Obama: "The world is inspired by the American ideal of diverse communities living together. We must live up to this ideal and invite others to do so as well."

Patel's op-ed following the terrorist attacks in Mumbai: "Finding A Connection To Judaism During the Eid"


Read Eboo Patel's article in the Washington Post