Eboo Patel is the founder and executive director of Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), a Chicago-based institution building the global interfaith youth movement. Author of the award-winning book Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation, Eboo is also a regular contributor to The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, National Public Radio and CNN. He is a member of President Obama's Advisory Council of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship. He was highlighted by US News & World Report as one of America's Best Leaders of 2009.

Eboo serves on the Religious Advisory Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations, on the Board of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the National Committee of the Aga Khan Foundation USA. He has spoken at the TED Conference, the Clinton Global Initiative, the Nobel Peace Prize Forum and universities around the world, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, the Review of Faith and International Affairs, and the Sunday Times of India. Eboo is a Young Global Leader in the World Economic Forum and an Ashoka Fellow, part of a select group of social entrepreneurs whose ideas are changing the world. He was named by Islamica Magazine as one of ten young Muslim visionaries shaping Islam in America; was chosen by Harvard's Kennedy School Review as one of five future policy leaders to watch; and along with IFYC was honored with the Roosevelt Institute's Freedom of Worship Medal in 2009.