Dr. Suzanne Barakat
Board Chair, Our Three Winners Foundation
2025
Dr. Suzanne Barakat is a practicing physician, humanitarian, and prominent advocate for inclusion and social justice. She earned her undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before completing her residency in Family and Community Medicine at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Barakat has worked extensively with refugees and has contributed to research on the mental health of Arabic-speaking communities worldwide. Her clinical practice spans hospital medicine, labor and delivery, and urgent care, focusing predominantly on underserved communities.
In 2015, Dr. Barakat gained international recognition following the tragic murders of her brother, his wife, and her sister in an Islamophobic hate crime in North Carolina. She now serves as board chair of Our Three Winners Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to combating Islamophobia and promoting social justice. Her advocacy extends to high-level policy influence, where she has engaged with top U.S. officials and contributed to the White House Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate.
The violent loss of her family members to hate and persecution, in the U.S. and abroad, has uniquely positioned Dr. Barakat to combine medical training with advocacy work, establishing her as a national leader in refugee health and asylum medicine. As the executive director of the UCSF Health and Human Rights Initiative, she spearheaded efforts to standardize clinical training and documentation of human rights violations and developed the world’s first clinical fellowship in asylum medicine.
A respected lecturer who frequently speaks on refugee and asylee health, human rights, and countering Islamophobia and hate crimes, Dr. Barakat has participated in roundtable discussions with global leaders, appeared on major news outlets, been featured in documentaries, and delivered a TED Talk. President Biden honored her with the Uniter award.
The Summit unites the public and private sectors, domestic and international, against hate and extremism. Researchers, activists, lawyers, technology experts, political leaders, and more come together, each bringing their unique tools to the fight. Important relationships that were established at the Summit in 2021 have carried forward into working groups with concrete deliverables for 2022 and beyond.
