NEW YORK, NY – December 2, 2011 – On April 26, 2012, Intersections International will host its second bi-annual Awards Gala to recognize three distinguished individuals. This year’s honorees include award-winning Egyptian columnist and international speaker, Mona Eltahawy; serial social entrepreneur and KIND Healthy Snacks CEO, Daniel Lubetzky; and LGBT justice advocate and Progressive Christians Uniting Executive Director, Peter Laarman. The honorees, who represent diverse constituencies, will be recognized at the Edison Ballroom in New York City.
Mona Eltahawy has worked as a reporter, correspondent, and columnist for the New York Times, the Guardian, Al Jazeera, and The Washington Post. She has utilized journalism, social media and other methods of communication to give voice to women’s rights, Muslim empowerment, and issues of justice and inequality. She has served as an intercultural ambassador for Muslim and non-Muslim communities and has been lauded as the first Egyptian journalist to live and work for a Western news agency within Israel. The international public speaker is a leading global voice on Arab, Muslim and women’s issues.
Daniel Lubetzky is a serial social entrepreneur who at the age of 28, was recognized by the World Economic Forum as one of the 100 Global Leaders for Tomorrow. His innovative business models intersect social objectives and sustainable market-driven forces. He is the founder and CEO of KIND Healthy Snacks, and the Kind Movement— which works to create new paths that avoid false compromises; founder of Peaceworks Inc. and the PeaceWorks Foundation’s OneVoice Movement; and co-founder of 3000 degrees, which applies lessons of PeaceWorks to new ventures in Liberia, Kenya and India. Daniel is a leading thinker around economic justice issues and has lectured at the World Bank, the United Nations, and the World Economic Forum.
Peter Laarman, a graduate of Brown University and Yale Divinity School, has spent decades as a progressive community organizer for U.S. labor and LGBT justice issues. Ordained in the United Church of Christ, Peter spent 15 years as a labor movement strategist and communications specialist prior to training for the ministry. Currently the Executive Director of Progressive Christians Uniting, Peter is a leading voice in the U.S for progressive values within the religious community. He is the founding visionary of the Religious Voices Project now known as Believe Out Loud, which is a national campaign for LGBT inclusive Christianity that fuses and amplifies the efforts of fifteen secular and faith based partner organizations.
Intersections is dedicated to promoting justice, reconciliation, and peace across lines of faith, culture, ideology, race, class, national borders and other boundaries that divide humanity. We are honored to recognize the efforts of these three individuals who speak out and lead disparate voices towards building a better tomorrow.
