Indian American Civil Rights Activist Sapreet K. Saluja Named Executive Director of New York Cares
- The first woman to lead The Sikh Coalition, she was most recently chief strategic partnerships and new ventures officer at Girl Scouts of the USA.
Indian American civil rights activist Sapreet K. Saluja has been appointed executive director of New York Cares, the city’s leading volunteer management organization, effective May 16. She succeeds Gary Bagley, who stepped down after serving as executive director for more than 13 years.
Saluja joins New York Cares from Girl Scouts of the USA, where she
has held multiple senior management roles, first as chief fund development officer and most recently as chief strategic partnerships and new ventures officer. “She led the development and implementation of strategies that supported the organization’s partnerships and fundraising efforts, including initiatives that dramatically extended GSUSA’s reach and impact on girls and young women nationwide,” according to a New York Cares press release.
Saluja said she’s “incredibly grateful” to join “one of the most important and innovative organizations working to improve the lives of all New Yorkers, especially those whose struggles have only been exacerbated by the unprecedented challenges of the past two years.”
Before joining Girl Scouts, Saluja was the executive director of The Sikh Coalition, becoming the first woman to lead a Sikh civil rights organization in the United States. In that role, she brought programs, partners and volunteers across the United States together to defend the rights of the Sikhs to practice their faith.
Earlier in her career, she was managing director of strategy at Teach for America, where she developed human capital leadership strategies for work aimed at overcoming inequality in education. She spent nearly three years as a United States Peace Corps volunteer in Uganda and Kenya, creating local programs in the areas of conservation, conflict resolution and organizational development.
She received her B.S. in Marketing and International Business from the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University and is a member of the Board of Directors at the Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation.