Deepa Iyer is the Executive Director of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), a national, non-profit organization dedicated to fostering civic and political engagement by South Asian communities in the United States.SAALT engages in policy advocacy, community education, leadership development, and coalition-building activities through the use of a social justice framework.

Ms. Deepa Iyer

Ms. Iyer is an immigrant who moved to the United States from India when she was twelve years old. An attorney by training, she has worked as a Staff Attorney at the Asian American Justice Center and Legal Director at the Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center.  Ms. Iyer has also served as Trial Attorney at the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice where she worked closely on initiatives to address post 9/11 backlash discrimination.  Through her work over the past ten years, Ms. Iyer has advocated for effective policies and practices around language access, civil rights, immigration reform and voting rights.

Ms. Iyer has also taught classes at Columbia University, Hunter College and the University of Maryland about Asian and South Asian American communities, and has published articles about the impact of post 9/11 policies on South Asians in the United States.  Ms. Iyer is the Executive Producer of a documentary about hate crimes in the post 9/11 environment, and was recently featured in Beyond the Big Law Firm.  She is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and the University of Notre Dame Law School.

Debbie Wei has been an educator for over 25 years, and has taught in both Hong Kong and in the School District of Philadelphia. She was a founding member of Asian Americans United, a community based organization dedicated to involving Asian Americans in Philadelphia in exercising leadership to build their communities. AAU and the Philadelphia Folklore Project worked together to open the first public school in Philadelphia Chinatown, the Folk Arts-Cultural Treasures Charter School where Debbie currently works as principal. Debbie served on the founding board of the school as well.

Ms. Debbie Wei

Debbie has written numerous articles on education for journals such as the Philadelphia Public School Notebook and Rethinking Schools.  She has published two children's books –and a high school textbook, Resistance in Paradise (winner of the 1999 Meyers Award for Outstanding Contribution to American History). She has received a number of awards including A Bannerman Fellowship for Activists of Color, the Waters Award for Intergenerational Activism from Bread and Roses Community Foundation, and A Magazine's A List – Top 20 Asian Pacific Americans to Watch in the New Millennium. She was also an Asian Pacific American Women's Leadership Institute Fellow.

Debbie is a beneficiary of affirmative action and the daughter of undocumented immigrants. She names these roles proudly as someone who has benefited from those who struggled before her, and as a reminder that she has a debt to pay which compels her to continue to fight for social justice in the US and the world.