Thenmozhi Soundararajan

Thenmozhi Soundararajan is a Dalit American artist, community organizer, technologist, and theorist, and author of The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition. Thenmozhi is cofounder and the executive director of Equality Labs, the largest Dalit civil rights organization working to empower caste–oppressed people in the United States and globally. Through her work at Equality Labs, Thenmozhi has mobilized South Asian Americans towards dismantling systems of oppression, with the goal of ending caste apartheid, gender-based violence, white supremacy, and religious intolerance.

Thenmozhi’s work has been recognized by the United States Congress, The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, The Producers Guild of America Diversity Program, The Museum of Contemporary Art, The Sorbonne, Source Magazine, Utne Reader, The National Center for the Humanities, The National Science Foundation, The Ford Foundation, and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. She is a frequent contributor on issues related to South Asia, caste, gender, and racial equity, as well interfaith issues and peace building, and has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, Guardian, ABC, and NBC news. She was also an inaugural fellow of the Robert Rauschenberg Artist as Activist,  Atlantic Foundation for Racial Equity, and is a current fellow at Stanford Center for South Asian Studies. 

Thenmozhi previously cofounded Third World Majority, an international media training organization and collective that supported people from disenfranchised groups in telling their stories in their own way. Her intersectional, cross-pollinating work—research, education, art, activism, and digital security—helps to create a more generous, global, expansive, and inclusive definition of South Asian identity, along with safe spaces from which to honor the stories of these communities.

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