Jody Williams is an outspoken peace activist who began to find her voice protesting the Vietnam War. She struggles to reclaim the real meaning of peace, which     is defined by human security, not national security. For her, working for peace requires dogged persistence and a commitment to  sustainable peace, with socioeconomic justice and equality.

After a decade of work in the 1980s trying to stop  US military involvement in El Salvador and Nicaragua, she was asked to create a civil society campaign to ban antipersonnel landmines. Beginning in early 1992 with two non-governmental organizations and a staff of one – herself, Williams oversaw the growth of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines to over 1,300 organizations in 95 countries working to eliminate the weapon. In an unprecedented cooperative effort with governments, UN bodies and the International Committee of the Red Cross, she served as a chief strategist and spokesperson for the ICBL as it dramatically achieved its goal of an international treaty banning antipersonnel landmines during a diplomatic conference held in Oslo in September 1997. A few weeks later it was announced that Jody Williams and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines would share the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for their groundbreaking work leading to the Mine Ban Treaty.

Since January of 2006, Williams has served as the founding chair of the Nobel Women’s Initiative. Along with sister Nobel Laureate Dr. Shirin Ebadi of Iran, she took the lead in establishing the Initiative. Williams is the Sam & Cele Keeper Endowed Professor of Peace and Social Justice in the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston, where she has taught since 2003. Her memoir on life as a grassroots activist, My Name is Jody Williams: A Vermont Girl’s Winding Path to the Nobel Peace Prize was released by the University of California Press in 2013.