Jill Salzman
In the 3 years that I’ve run The Founding Moms, I never expected that we would take any part building peace around the world. It was not my intention when we started off. But that’s precisely what’s became of our grassroots organization.
When I launched my first meeting of mom entrepreneurs via Meetup.com in 2010, I invited any woman in my small town who had a business and had babies to meet up. At the time, I was running two businesses and was pregnant with my second child. I’d gotten …

Noa Baum
Jerusalem & Washington, D.C.

Since 2002, Israeli-born storyteller Noa Baum has performed “A Land Twice Promised”, a one-woman show based on her dialogue with a Palestinian woman also living in the United States. The piece weaves together both the women’s and their mothers’ memories of war and occupation. Baum’s work illuminates the complex and contradictory history and emotions that surround Jerusalem for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict seeps despair into the Western consciousness, with more than 60 years of wars and occupation, thousands dead, and no end in sight. …

Ashley Gibson interviews and writes on University of Oklahoma professor and granddaughter of a former Kashmiri prime minister Nyla Ali Khan, whose writings are making headlines in both India and Pakistan.
Khan’s extensive family history, particularly the portion pertaining to the leadership of her late grandfather Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, has been at the center of South Asia’s political debates for decades. Now, after spending years on her own academic quest to discover the truth of her grandfather’s ideals, Khan, a noted scholar and author on Kashmiri culture and politics, is addressing …

Gisela Santiago
Los Angeles, United States
“All women — regardless of immigration status or of color —  deserve equal access to reproductive care and equal treatment in all aspects of life. Immigrants’ rights are a women’s issue.”
***
May 1st, known as International Workers Day, has become a day to demand full rights for immigrants and work equality here in Los Angeles and across the US. Even though the United States is known as a place of opportunity and success, the harsh reality is that while there are stories of success there are also …