Fellows Kamau Marcharia and Tirso Moreno.
The Petra Foundation was established in 1988 to sustain the trajectory of Petra Tölle Shattuck's life by honoring the kind of people she most admired – unsung individuals making distinctive contributions to the rights, autonomy and dignity of others.

Each year since then, through a national search and nomination process, the Petra Foundation has recognized such leaders as Petra Fellows.

Often at risk and without the safety net of personal privilege or institutional support, Petra Fellows fight poverty, discrimination, environmental degradation and violence. They work in prisons and police departments, labor unions and migrant worker camps, health clinics, housing projects, family farms and public schools – wherever people lack the resources, education, connections or clout to participate fully in American society. Armed with the fierce passion for justice that inspired Petra Shattuck, they are fixing what’s broken in American society.

Recognizing the catalytic effect of engaging emerging and experienced leaders on an on-going basis, the foundation sustains its commitment to the Petra Fellows, hosting their participation in annual gatherings to share strategies and make common cause and marshalling the professional and personal resources of foundation activists to support fellows in their work. The resulting collaborations continue to multiply and bear fruit.

Petra Fellows encourage others to make a difference in their own communities. Not one of the fellows honored to date has stopped working or growing. Many have gone on to receive wider recognition and their local successes have become models of regional and national significance.

Ingeniously organized by those it sought to encourage, the Petra Foundation – an all-volunteer, publicly supported 501(c)(3) with one paid staff director – has become a national network of leaders working across the lines of age, race, class and issue to build a more just society.

Today, as government at all levels disinvests in the public weal, as the courts retreat from the hard-won remedies of the civil rights revolution, as the ranks of the poor and disenfranchised continue to swell in the world’s richest democracy, leaders working at the local level to craft innovative solutions to enduring problems are needed more than ever before.