“I have always been concerned with social justice. I have never seriously considered anything else.”
Kate Mackintosh, THNK Class 9 participant, recently became the Executive Director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA.
Founded with a $20 million gift from the estate of Kirk Kerkorian, an Armenian-American businessman and philanthropist, The Promise Institute is named after the first Hollywood film to be made about the Armenian genocide, The Promise. The title refers to the promise to the victims and survivors of mass human rights abuses to not forget and to work to support human rights and prevent these atrocities from happening again.
While the institute has only just opened, it is already making progress. “Even before we developed our own robust research, teaching, and advocacy programs, we have launched conversations in the university around human rights,” says Kate. “We have partnered with the impact program at the business school as well as with information studies and Hollywood actors and producers — and next year we will have a poet in residence! So, I feel we are shaking things up already.”