IofC USA Board Member, Krish Raval, Receives an Order of the British Empire (OBE)
We congratulate KRISH RAVAL, our Board Member and #CauxScholarsProgram alumni, for his tireless dedication in building interfaith communities within the U.K. In October, Krish was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) by the Queen of England for his work in leadership education and interfaith cohesion.
Krish is the director of Faith in Leadership (FiL). The organization was founded in 2007 to create an inclusive, interfaith community of leaders to work together on initiatives that are healthy and beneficial to all people. Discussing the program space that FiL provides, Krish details: “Religious decision makers learn to lead in a way that enables them to connect and share with one another across faith boundaries: to work and reason together, to eat and talk together, to laugh together, to disagree and to share silence. You are likely to come away surprised at your own response to the course, thinking very differently about the way that you lead and about the deep resources that each faith has for serious engagement with itself, with others, and with the wider secular and religious context.”
A lawyer by background, Krish’s dedication to people led him to work with undergraduates and high school students in the fields of addictions, eating disorders, group therapy, and eventually leadership development. After attending Caux, Krish formed Learn to Lead (L2L) in 1996, a leadership program for young people that has matured into a national educational organization where a broad range of community leaders mentor university students who in turn lead interventions for teenagers, including those who have dropped out of traditional education systems.
We can testify firsthand to Krish’s impact, compassion, generosity and humble nature. He has created transformative, sincere and intergenerational spaces for interfaith understanding, exchange, and collaboration. As an expert facilitator, he has trained thousands of community leaders to bridge gaps between faith communities through an active commitment to practices in deep listening, inclusive learning, and relational trust building.
In receipt of the OBE honor, Krish shares: “Through the Faith in Leadership and Learn to Lead programs, I have been privileged to train over 2,000 people across the United Kingdom about the importance of respecting differences and bridge-building for the common good. None of that would have been possible without the help of my own mentors and the support of my dear family, including my parents who brought untold strength and resilience when they emigrated here decades ago. Our faiths call for a deepening of community, and I catch glimpses of this in Britain’s wonderful diversity, particularly through my wider family of Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, Jewish and Christian alumni, faculty and friends. This honor ultimately points to their constancy and brilliance.”