Jody Williams

Nobel Peace Laureate

Country of focus: United States

Jody Williams (@JodyWilliams97) received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work to ban antipersonnel landmines through the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), which shared the Peace Prize with her that year. Like others who have seen the ravages of war, she is 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. Since January of 2006, Jody Williams has worked to achieve her peace work through the Nobel Women’s Initiative, which she chairs.

In 2003, Williams was named Distinguished Visiting Professor of Global Justice, in the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston. Her memoir My Name is Jody Williams: A Vermont Girl’s Winding Path to the Nobel Peace Prize was published by the University of California in March 2013.