2008 Awards

The winners of the Interfaith Award in 2008 were:

Ogyen Trinley Dorje

His Holiness, the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, is the spiritual leader of the Karma Kagyu lineage, one of the major traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. Born in Eastern Tibet on July 26th, 1985, he was recognized at the age of seven through a prediction letter, known as the Last Testament. In late 1999, in order to meet his teachers in India, the Karmapa left Tibet. Once there, the Karmapa traveled directly to see the Dalai Lama who received him with great warmth. The Indian government kindly granted the Karmapa refugee status, and he continues to stay at his temporary residence in Gyuto Monastery, not far from the Dalai Lama’s home in Dharamsala. The Karmapa’s wish to receive further instruction and meet with his former teachers is being fulfilled as he studies Buddhist philosophy and meditation while receiving the transmissions and empowerments from the masters of his lineage. With a special interest in books, he has worked to preserve ancient texts; he has also encouraged the practice of the meditative rituals, which were brought from India to Tibet centuries ago and which form the core practices at all his monasteries inside and outside Tibet. His Holiness the Gyalwa Karmapa holds, teaches, and inspires the lineage of the Kagyu order, which is known for its meditative practices, its focus on retreat, and the many realized masters it has produced.

Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp
Awraham Soetendorp was born in 1943 in Amsterdam and survived as a "hidden child," during World War II. He studied at the Leo Baeck Rabbinical College in London and was ordained in 1967. Rabbi Soetendorp has worked tirelessly to promote a shared vision for justice and peace nationally and throughout the world. He is committed to promoting a culture of peace, tolerance and justice among people of different faiths.

Vartan Gregorianian
Vartan Gregorian is the twelfth president of Carnegie Corporation of New York, a grant-making institution founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1911. Prior to his current position, which he assumed in June 1997, Gregorian served for nine years as the sixteenth president of Brown University. Gregorian serves on the boards of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Human Rights Watch, The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, and the Museum of Modern Art. He served on the boards of the J. Paul Getty Trust, the Aga Khan University, The McGraw-Hill Companies, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He has been decorated by the French, Italian, Austrian and Portuguese governments. His numerous civic and academic honors include some sixty honorary degrees, including those from Brown, Dartmouth, Drew, Johns Hopkins, University of Pennsylvania, the Jewish Theological Seminary, the City University of New York, Rutgers, Tufts, New York University, University of Aberdeen, The Juilliard School, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Fordham University, San Francisco State University and most recently, Unviversity of Notre Dame, and Carnegie Mellon University.