Over her life of service to humanity, Swamini Adityananda Saraswati 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.

Swamini Adityananda served as the Interim Executive Director of the world’s largest interfaith organization, United Religions Initiative, which has a presence in 112 nations. She also served as the Associate Executive Director of the Elijah Interfaith Institute, which works closely with faith leaders, including the Pope and Dalai Lama, to build friendship and mutual understanding across faiths. 

Previously, Swamini spearheaded the founding, development and growth of the Global Interfaith WASH Alliance (GIWA) in Rishikesh, India. She was responsible for its original concept, overall design, strategic plans, programs, partnership development, general operations, publications, and fundraising. From the beginning, her workweeks were often over 80 hours long, as she strove to address poverty, climate change, water scarcity and other crucial matters.

Due in great part to her efforts, GIWA was globally launched at UNICEF World Headquarters, in partnership with UNICEF, the Government of the Netherlands, and USAID. She subsequently conceptualized and led campaigns that impacted millions, resulting in accolades including a Guinness World Record.

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. She would later spearhead rights-based campaigns with a ActionAid International, including in five African nations, a war zone, and other global locations.

Swamini’s environmental scholarship includes certificates from Reykjavik University, Yale, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She undertook graduate studies in International Sustainable Development and Climate Change at Antioch University New England.

She has published and presented several scholarly policy papers on environmental issues. She also co-wrote the draft Ganga Rights Act, a historic Bill which utilized the Rights of Nature Legal Framework for the first time in the nation. Swamini completed her Clinical Pastoral Education at Northwestern University’s Central DuPage Hospital, and has served as an Intern Minister with First UU Church of San Diego and the Unitarian Church of Hinsdale. Recently, she was certified as a Mindfulness Meditation teacher through the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Greater Good and the Awareness Training Institute. She was also certified as a Mentor by Banyan. This May, she expects to complete an MDiv degree from Meadville Lombard Theological School, where she currently serves as a Trustee representing the student body.

As a Hindu-UU, in 2012, she became one of the world’s few Western females to be ordained in a traditional Hindu order of Adi Shankaracharya. She is now proud to also be a Candidate for UU Ministry, and is delighted to have been appointed as the Chair of UU Ministry for Earth.