American Political Activist
Jody Williams received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work as founding coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which shared the Peace Prize with her that year.
She’s an outspoken peace activist who struggles to reclaim the real meaning of peace—a concept which goes far beyond the absence of armed conflict and is defined by human security, not national security. Williams believes that working for peace requires dogged persistence and is not for the faint of heart.
Since 2006, Ms. Williams has chaired the Nobel Women’s Initiative with its mission to support and amplify the efforts of women around the world working for sustainable peace with justice and equality.
In 2013, in her ongoing work on disarmament, she helped found the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, weapons that on their own, with no meaningful human control, could target and kill human beings.
With her memoir, My Name is Jody Williams: A Vermont Girl’s Winding Path to the Nobel Peace Prize, released in 2013, she challenges “ordinary” people to be active agents of change.