At the 2025 Interfaith Leadership Summit, IA network members joined StoryCorps One Small Step for 30-minute, one-on-one conversations across lines of difference. These kinds conversations happen every day among students, co-workers, and family members in America, and the Summit is a space where participants can learn to seek them out with the purpose of respecting diverse identities, fostering meaningful relationships, and cooperating for the common good.
Listen to friends and IA Emerging Leaders Suraj Arshanapally and Anastasia Young discuss their first encounters with interfaith cooperation, their experience attending Interfaith America events as undergraduates, the impact bridgebuilding work has had on their personal lives and careers in the full conversation.
Friends Suraj Arshanapally and Anastasia Young both regard the Interfaith Leadership Summit as a stop worth revisiting on their journeys as interfaith leaders.
Though their initial encounters with interfaith cooperation at home looked different — with Arshanapally citing a formative experience coming from a Hindu family and having a Muslim babysitter, while Young grew up in an ecumenical Christian household — both experienced new worldviews and perspectives in college.
They found their way into interfaith work and attended the Summit, formerly known as the Interfaith Leadership Institute (ILI), as undergraduates.
“When I think about moments in my life that helped me be me today, attending the ILI and learning interfaith cooperation skills in college has been something that I’ve iterated on [in the] now 10 years post college,” said Young.
Now, the two are members of IA’s Emerging Leaders Network (ELN), professionals in the healthcare industry, and trainers at the Summit.
Through the Interfaith Leadership Summit, Interfaith America provides a pathway for students to learn about interfaith leadership, develop their skills, and — like Suraj and Anastasia — carry those experiences and relationships into their professional lives.
For Young, the foundations of interfaith leadership she first learned as an undergraduate have helped her navigate a career in nursing, approaching sensitive and challenging cases with curiosity and respect.
She described an experience from early in her career, when she worked with other hospital employees to build relationships and coordinate safety precautions necessary to honor a patient’s wishes to hold a smudging ceremony — a rite in his tradition for those nearing the end of their lives, and one the hospital didn’t necessarily already have existing resources for.
“It was like the first time where I saw a bridgebuilding in action in healthcare. That has really stuck with me,” she reflected.
Arshanapally also leans on skills he’s developed in interfaith work in his career as a public health communications professional.
“I think about my work as a bridgebuilder in the world of public health [as] an opportunity to create a healthier society”
“I think about my work as a bridgebuilder in the world of public health [as] an opportunity to create a healthier society,” he said. “If we can all cooperate with one another, and we can learn from one another, and we can change policy in a way that improves the health of everybody, we are doing bridgebuilding work.”
The Summit also offers a unique opportunity to join in community with other interfaith leaders and to foster those relationships after graduation by joining the ELN.
Though the two met just a few years ago, as Arshanapally put it, their relationship “is a testament to [the] really strong friendships” that the ELN creates.
As Emerging Leaders, Young and Arshanapally give back to the interfaith community they first learned from, serving as trainers at the Interfaith Leadership Summit and teaching the next generation of students how to engage across difference and cooperate for the common good.
“Now I get to support other students and leaders on their journey.”
“It really has come full circle,” Young said. “Now I get to facilitate some of the trainings that I once was enrolled in and support other students and leaders on their journey.”
Rachel Crowe is Interfaith America’s Staff Writer for IA Today.
Upcoming Events
- August 7, 2026 10:00 am
