Shige Sakurai (they/them)
Full name: Rev. Shige Sakurai
Director of Equity, Belonging, and Change
Shige Sakurai (they/them) serves as Director of Equity, Belonging, and Change at the Unitarian Universalist Association, a progressive religious denomination with over 1,000 congregations.
Shige is a Unitarian Universalist with atheist, Shinto, Buddhist, and Christian heritages, and involvement in Druidry. They are ordained in the Gnostic Celtic Church, the independent sacramental church of nature spirituality and clergy branch of the Ancient Order of Druids in America. They have a Health Minister Certificate from Wesley Theological Seminary.
They are also an adjunct professor for American University’s International Training and Education Program; executive education faculty for University of Southern California’s Race and Equity Center; and Editorial Board member for Including Disability, an international peer-reviewed journal.
Shige founded International Pronouns Day, authored Pronouns.org, and is the first person in the U.S. to receive an officially nonbinary, X-marker driver’s license. They have received awards from Diversity Abroad, the National LGBTQ Task Force, and the Mayor of Washington, DC during the Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month Celebration.
They have conducted hundreds of speaking engagements, including at UCLA, Georgetown, Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Columbia, and NYU. They have been interviewed by media around the world, including USA Today, Washington Post, CNN, Reuters, El País, BBC, NHK, and France Télévisions.