Swamini Adityananda Saraswati

Over her life of service to humanity, Swamini has worked with national and international nonprofit and interfaith organizations from the ground level to the United Nations and World Bank levels, working on climate change, hunger, water scarcity, violence, global poverty, interfaith harmony, and other crucial issues.

While residing in India, Swamini was the founding Director of the Global Interfaith WASH Alliance (GIWA), through which she strove to address environmental, social justice, humanitarian, and public health concerns by uniting India’s foremost faith leaders on a single platform. Swamini has also served as the Interim Executive Director of the world’s largest interfaith organization, United Religions Initiative (with presence in 112 countries), as well as the Associate Executive Director of the Elijah Interfaith Institute, which works closely with faith leaders, including the Pope and Dalai Lama. Prior to that, she co-founded Chicago’s Pan-African Association, which enabled thousands of survivors of war, hunger, genocide, persecution, and torture from across the world to survive and thrive in the United States during its 17 years of existence.

Over her long career, Swamini also helped spearhead rights-based campaigns with ActionAid, including in five African nations, a war zone, and other locations. Swamini can trace her UU heritage to her Great-Great Grandfather, who started attending Unitarian services in the 1890s. She has long identified as a Hindu-UU. In 2012, in India’s high Himalayas, Swamini became one of the world’s few western females to be ordained into a traditional Hindu monastic order of Adi Shankaracharya. She is delighted to now also be a Candidate for UU Ministry.

As a proud MLTS MDiv student, Swamini completed her Clinical Pastoral Education at Northwestern University’s Central DuPage Hospital, and served as an Intern Minister with First UU Church of San Diego. She also became a certified Mindfulness Meditation teacher through the University of California Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center after two years of training. Swamini is currently Vice Chair of UU Ministry for Earth. Her cherished goal is a future career as a Unitarian Universalist parish minister, where she can serve congregants and our interconnected world for the rest of her days, in support of UUism’s Living Tradition.