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Following in the footsteps of “five who hustle,” Echoing Green’s Heart at Work interview series highlights individuals whose changemaking paths we admire. Like so many of us, their careers were not linear. Rather, they were creative, bold, and, at times, different than what others expected. But the individuals stayed the course and changed fields and lives in the process.

Meet Valarie Kaur, an award-winning filmmaker using storytelling to spark social change. In the spirit of big q’s, ask yourself some of the questions Valarie answered, and tell us how you are working on purpose.

You can also meet Valarie in person on the panel, "Out of the Shadows of 9/11: Millennials, Moral Vision, and the Global Groundswell," part of The Jack and Lewis Rudin Lecture Series on Tuesday, September 6, 2011, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. For more information or to RSVP, please email groundswell@auburnseminary.org.

Current occupation/title:
Executive Director of Groundswell at Auburn Theological Seminary

A song on the soundtrack of my life:
Death Came A Knocking by Ruthie Foster

When I was young, I wanted to be:
A National Geographic photo journalist

What was your first job?
Teaching high school students my own philosophy class modestly named "The Quest for Truth"

What’s your favorite career mistake?
Stretching time and resources to reach for terribly gigantic dreams.

What socially significant career accomplishment are you most proud of, thus far?
The grassroots storytelling, dialogue, and advocacy inspired by our film Divided We Fall (www.dwf-film.com).

What is one book OR film that significantly influenced your path and why?
The Politics of Storytelling by Michael Jackson, who later became my adviser at Harvard Divinity School. It showed me precisely why stories have the power to change the world: violence strips people of their voice and agency; strategic storytelling has the power to restore them. I began to see my own vocation as that of a storyteller—through filming, writing, speaking, organizing, and lawyering—raising up the buried stories that can heal and repair the world.

Who is one person whose changemaking career you greatly admire and why?
My Grandfather Gurdial Singh or "Papa Ji." He was a soldier who never fired a shot, a poet who published his own books in three languages, a gardener who grew baskets of vegetables and fruits for his grandchildren, a devout Sikh who hummed the sacred prayers all day, a wise soul who lived "like a lotus upon tumultuous waters" and brought joy, laughter, and healing to all he met —whether in an army unit, at a poetry reading, or on his death bed. Each day, I practice living my life like him—with fearlessness, generosity, service, and love, no matter where I am.

What would you have been voted "most likely to be" in high school?
I was voted "most likely to succeed" in high school. I should have been voted "most likely to leap into whirlwinds, fall, and get up to do it again."

Valarie Kaur is an award-winning filmmaker, public speaker, and writer in her third year at Yale Law School. She is also currently the executive director of Groundswell at Auburn Theological Seminary. Valarie has harnessed multiple tools to advocate on behalf of communities swept up in hate crimes, racial profiling, and immigration policies. She wrote and produced Divided We Fall (2008), the first feature film on racism in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 and winner of more than a dozen international awards. She has been featured in print, radio, and television media such as CNN, NPR, and the BBC and in several books.

Valarie earned her bachelor’s degrees in religious studies and international relations with honors at Stanford University. She went on to study narrative ethics, receiving her masters in theological studies at Harvard Divinity School as a Harvard Presidential Scholar.

Now at Yale Law School, Valarie studies and advocates on civil rights issues and serves as the founding director of the Yale Visual Law Project, an alternative law journal. As part of her clinical work, she has represented individuals arrested in immigration raids and brought national attention to the problem of racial profiling and police brutality in East Haven, CT.

In 2009, Valarie reported on the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as a representative of the National Institute of Military Justice. She served as a legal clerk on the Senate Judiciary Committee for Senator Russell Feingold.

In 2011, she joined Auburn Theological Seminary as the director of Groundswell, a broad-based initiative to spark and empower the multifaith movement for justice.

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