Simran Jeet Singh is Executive Director for the Aspen Institute’s Inclusive America Project and author of The Light We Give: The Power of Sikh Wisdom to Transform Your Life (Riverhead / Penguin Random House, 2022).
Recognized among TIME Magazine’s 16 people fighting for a more equal America, Simran Jeet Singh is a Senior Adviser for Equity and Inclusion at YSC Consulting, Soros Equality Fellow with the Open Society Foundations, and Visiting Professor for Union Seminary. Simran is a regular contributor for TIME Magazine, CNN.com, and The Washington Post, and a monthly columnist for Religion News Service. he holds multiple degrees: a PhD, MPhil, and MA from Columbia University, an MTS from Harvard University, and a BA from Trinity University.
This past year, Simran released his best-selling children’s book from Penguin Random House (Kokila), Fauja Singh Keeps Going: The True Story of the Oldest Person to Ever Run a Marathon. More than 25,000 copies of this book have been distributed all around the world.
Growing up as a turban-wearing, brown-skinned, beard-loving Sikh in South Texas, Simran learned early that marginalized groups will not lecture their way into dignity and that empathy is truly built when people get to know each other as human beings. This realization is what brought him into the deep work of empathy-building as an approach for personal development and social
change.
Simran is a highly sought-out speaker on diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice. His thought leadership extends across corporate, university, and educational settings, and his work has been featured in various outlets, including NPR, CNN, BBC, TIME, The Harvard Business Review, and The New York Times.
Simran lives with his family in New York City.