Manjusha (Manju) P. Kulkarni

Manjusha (Manju) P. Kulkarni was born in India and immigrated to Alabama with her parents, both physicians. When Kulkarni was a teen, she witnessed her mother file and win a class-action lawsuit after being denied a role at a Birmingham hospital because of her immigration status. That, along with Kulkarni’s own experience as one of the only Asian American students at her school, helped inspire her lifelong activism.

Kulkarni earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Duke University and a JD from Boston University School of Law. She worked at the Southern Poverty Law Center and clerked at the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “When we as a nation exclude, incarcerate, and investigate individuals because of their race, religion, and national origin, we betray our values, and we cause real harm to our citizens,” she said in her TEDx Talk, “From Hate to Healing.”

In 2017, after leading the South Asian Network, a Southern California organization dedicated to the safety and well-being of persons of South Asian origin, Kulkarni was made executive director of AAPI Equity Alliance, a coalition of community-based organizations representing the 1.6 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) in Los Angeles County. In 2020 she cofounded Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition tracking and fighting racial injustice against AAPI people. Kulkarni was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people for her work alerting the public to the realities of anti-Asian racism.