Deepa Iyer

Deepa Iyer is a weaver, frontline responder, storyteller, and guide. Through her work at the Building Movement Project, Deepa creates narratives, provides trainings, and facilitates networks around social change and solidarity practice. Her politcal and community homes include Asian American, South Asian, Muslim, and Arab spaces, where she spent fifteen years responding to the backlash of the September 11th attacks. Deepa served as executive director of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) for a decade and has also held positions at Race Forward, the US Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, the Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center, and the Asian American Justice Center. Her first book, We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future (The New Press 2015), received a 2016 American Book Award. In 2019, Deepa received an honorary doctoral degree from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. An immigrant who moved to Kentucky from Kerala (India) when she was twelve, Deepa graduated from the University of Notre Dame Law School and Vanderbilt University.