Link TV and the One Nation Film Contest are honored to have the following individuals take part in the final selection of prize winners. Your votes will determine the finalists in the contest, and after voting ends, the final decisions will be made by our panel of guest judges.
Sara AbbasiPhilanthropist
| Sara Abbasi serves on the Executive board of Developments in Literacy (DIL), a U.S.-based non-profit organization established to promote female literacy in the remote, underdeveloped areas of Pakistan. In 2001, Ms. Abbasi launched the San Francisco chapter of DIL. |
Danny GloverActor/Activist
| Danny Glover is an award-winning actor, film director, and political activist. To movie fans, he is best known for his roles of “Mister” in The Color Purple and Roger Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon film series. But outside of Hollywood, he’s equally well-known for his social activism. A native of San Francisco, his social conscience was instilled by his parents, both active members of the NAACP. As a student at San Francisco State University during the Sixties, he was a member of the Black Students Union and part of the struggle to establish an Ethnic Studies department on campus. Mr. Glover has served on a number of international and national advisory groups and boards. In March 1998, he was appointed as ambassador to the United Nations Development Programme and works as an ambassador for UNICEF. He serves on the boards of: Something Positive Dance Group, RFK Memorial, Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, The Algebra Project, and United States Artists and is Board Chair of TransAfrica Forum. |
Mariane PearlJournalist
| Mariane Pearl is a French journalist, who currently lives in the U.S. and is a reporter and columnist for Glamour magazine. Ms. Pearl is the widow of Wall Street reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and killed in Pakistan by terrorists in 2002. Her memoir, A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Danny Pearl was the basis of a movie by the same name, with the starring role played by actress Angelina Jolie. She was five months pregnant when her husband was murdered and gave birth to their son Adam afterward. |
Azhar UsmanComedian
| Azhar Usman is among the world’s leading Muslim standup comedians. Born and raised in Chicago to immigrant parents from India, he is co-founder of the internationally acclaimed “Allah Made Me Funny—The Official Muslim Comedy Tour.” He has performed in over a dozen countries on five continents. Azhar and the Tour have been featured in over 100 major world media, including ABC Nightline, CBS Sunday Morning, Fox News, BBC, CBC Canada, ABC Australia, Al-Jazeera International, NPR, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, TIME, Newsweek, and dozens more.
Azhar has appeared on MTV Networks as the sketch character he invented (Vijay the VJ), in Zarqa Nawaz’s documentary “Me and the Mosque,” and will be profiled in the upcoming PBS documentary “Standup: American Muslim Comics Come of Age,” by filmmaker Glenn Baker. He recently completed production of a feature-length Kings-of-Comedy-style concert-documentary film entitled “Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert!,” which is slated for release in 2008. He is an artist and an activist and continues to serve as a co-founding board member of The Nawawi Foundation, an Illinois non-profit dedicated to contemporary Islamic research. He holds degrees from the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Minnesota Law School. |
Kareem Abdul-JabbarRetired NBA All-Star
| Retired NBA All-Star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has had a stellar athletic career that began during his high school days at Power Memorial Academy in New York, through his three NCAA titles with the UCLA Bruins, and ended as one of the most honored players in the NBA during his 20 years.
In his first year as a NBA player, Abdul-Jabbar was named NBA Rookie of the Year for the Milwaukee Bucks. He then earned three NBA MVP awards with the Bucks and was part of Milwaukee's only championship team in 1971. When Abdul-Jabbar was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers in 1975, he led the Lakers to five NBA championships and won an additional three NBA MVP awards, for a record total of six MVPs. Upon his retirement in 1989, Abdul-Jabbar secured the record in nine NBA statistical categories, including the NBA's all-time leading scorer, a title he still holds today.
Life after basketball for Abdul-Jabbar has been busy. He is a recognized historian on African American history and has written six books, four of which were NY Times best sellers, including his latest book On The Shoulders of Giants. Abdul-Jabbar has also had great success in the acting field and is a proud cast member of one of the Top 10 Comedies of all time, Airplane! He also co-starred in one of the Top 10 Kung Fu movies of all time, Game of Death, Bruce Lee's last film. He has further proven his intellect by proudly becoming a two-time Jeopardy Champion, defeating Larry King.
In 2005 he re-joined his former team, the Los Angeles Lakers as a Special Assistant Coach helping the big men on the team, where he remains an insightful contributor to the Lakers Coaching staff today. |
