Eboo Patel

Eboo Patel is the founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based institution building the global interfaith youth movement. He was appointed by President Obama to the Advisory Council of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Initiatives, where he is working to realize the president’s priority of interfaith cooperation.

He 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 and has also written for the Harvard Divinity School Bulletin, the Chicago Tribune, the Clinton Journal, the Review of Faith and International Affairs, the Sunday Times of India, and National Public Radio. His latest book, We Need to Build: Fieldnotes for Diverse Democracy (May 2022), is an inspirational guide for those who seek to promote positive social change and build a more diverse and just democracy.

Patel serves on the Religious Advisory Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Committee of the Aga Khan Foundation USA, and the National Board of the YMCA. He has spoken at the TED Conference, the Clinton Global Initiative, the Nobel Peace Prize Forum, and at universities around the world. Patel is an Ashoka Fellow, part of a select group of social entrepreneurs whose ideas are changing the world; was named by Islamica Magazine as one of ten young Muslim visionaries shaping Islam in America; was chosen by Harvard’s Kennedy School Review as one of five future policy leaders to watch; and was most recently selected to join the Young Global Leaders network of the World Economic Forum.

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