Medea Benjamin has been an advocate for social justice for more than 30 years. She is co-founder of the human rights organization Global Exchange and Code Pink: Women for Peace, a women's group that has been organizing against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, pushing for a reorientation of budget priorities in the US to focus on heath care, education and housing, not war.

Medea has distinguished herself as an eloquent and energetic figure in the progressive movement. In 2005 she was one of 1,000 exemplary women from 140 countries nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the millions of women who do the essential work of peace worldwide. In 2010, she received the Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Prize from the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Since the September 11, 2001 tragedy,  Medea has been working to promote a U.S. foreign policy that would respect human rights and gain us allies instead of contributing to violence and undermining our international reputation. She has led numerous delegations to Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza and Pakistan.

Benjamin is the author/editor of eight books. Her latest is Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control, and she has been campaigning to get lethal drones out of the hands of the CIA. Her articles appear regularly in outlets such as The Huffington Post, CommonDreams, Alternet and OpEd News.

In 2000, Benjamin was a Green Party candidate for the California Senate.  During the 1990s, she focused her efforts on tackling the problem of unfair trade as promoted by the World Trade Organization. Widely credited as the woman who brought Nike to its knees and helped place the issue of sweatshops on the national agenda, Medea was a key player in the campaign that won a $20 million settlement from 27 US clothing retailers for the use of sweatshop labor in Saipan. She also pushed Starbucks and other companies to start carrying fair trade coffee.

Prior to founding Global Exchange in 1988, Medea worked for ten years as an economist and nutritionist in Latin America and Africa for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Health Organization, the Swedish International Development Agency, and the Institute for Food and Development Policy.