Leo Wolters Tejera

The IRI is excited to announce the awarding of the 2022 Rabbi Herman E. Schaalman Interreligious Leadership Award to Leo Wolters Tejera, which will be officially awarded at the André LaCocque InterReligious Lecture on March 15, 2022. Leo, ​​a second-year Masters of Religious Studies major with a concentration in Interreligious Studies, currently lives in the town of Olean, a small rural town in southwest New York. Their project proposes an interfaith/interidealogical lawn sign campaign in their town that would play on current community awareness of intersectionality. They will purchase and distribute 300-500 lawn signs bearing the words, “There is no them, only us,” to local community members, businesses, and organizations that agree to participate. In tandem with this, Leo will launch an op-ed campaign in Olean’s local and regional newspapers; this campaign will contain writings from each sector that was maligned by a local pastor/principal that reflect the central theme.