Tarunjit Singh Butalia, Ph.D., Vice Chair

Tarunjit Singh Butalia, Ph.D. currently serves as the Executive Director of Religions for Peace USA. He has been a servant-leader in the interfaith movement for over two decades. He has been a member of Board of Trustees of Parliament of the World’s Religions for 12 years as well as North American Interfaith Network. He is also a founding trustee of Sikh Council for Interfaith Relations  and serves on the Advisory Committee of the Global Sikh Council. He currently also serves on the Board of Faith in Public Life and the Interfaith Association of Central Ohio. He is former advisory board member of the Journal of Interreligious Studies. He has served on board of National Religious Coalition Against Torture as well as World Sikh Council – America Region. In 2016 he was awarded Luminosa Award for Unity by Focolare Movement and in 2020 he was honored by the National Council of Churches in the USA with its 2020 Gwynne Guibord Award for Excellence in Interreligious Leadership. Locally, he has worked with Interfaith Association for Central Ohio for over 20 years and is co-editor of landmark Ohio Bicentennial book Religion in Ohio: Profiles of Faith Communities. In 2021, he published a book My Journey Home: Going Back to Lehnda Punjab based on a visit to his ancestral home in Pakistan more than 70 years after his grandparents left it in 1947.