Georgia Tech will honor community and public affairs leader Nancy Parrish as recipient of the Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Social Courage at a luncheon to be held Noon-1:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 18. The luncheon will transpire in the middle of the Allen Prize Symposium, held from 9:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. that day. Both events will be held in The Biltmore ballrooms and the entire campus community is invited to attend. RSVP information can be found in mid-January on the Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Social Courage site. 

In 2011, Parrish founded Protect Our Defenders, the only national human rights organization solely dedicated to ending the epidemic of sexual assault and harassment in the U.S. military and its wide-ranging effects on our communities. In 2014, the New York Times wrote that Protect Our Defenders has “quickly become the nation’s pre-eminent advocacy group on behalf of victims of sexual assault in the military.”

Parrish was also a founding co-chair of Human Rights Watch’s Northern California Chapter, an organization dedicated to protecting human rights around the world. She has worked with President and Mrs. Carter in support of their international humanitarian work at the Carter Center, which is guided by a fundamental commitment to the alleviation of human suffering. By recognizing Parrish with the Allen Prize, Georgia Tech supports a universal message that human rights are imperative for a civil society.

The Allen Prize is given annually to individuals who, by asserting moral principle, have positively affected public discourse at the risk of their careers, livelihoods, and sometimes lives.

RSVP by February 10, 2016.