Saru Jayaraman
Indian American attorney, author, and activist
Sarumathi "Saru" Jayaraman (born April 3, 1975) is an American attorney, author, and activist from Los Angeles, California. She is an advocate for fair wages for restaurant workers and other service workers in the United States. In the aftermath of September 11, she co-founded the non-profit public service organization Restaurant Opportunities Centers United. And in 2013 she founded a new organization to work on these issues, called One Fair Wage. Jayaraman is a recipient of the Ashoka fellowship in 2013 and the Soros Equality Fellowship in 2020.
Early life
Born in 1975, Jayaraman was raised in a primarily hispanic neighborhood in Whittier, California. Her parents emigrated from India to the United States when her father was seeking work as a software engineer. They settled in the Los Angeles area, but Jayaraman's father lost his job when she was a teenager. She was made aware of her class and race at a young age. Her family frequently endured racial slurs and insults.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Saru Jayaraman” as indian American attorney, author, and activist. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as indian American attorney, author, and activist. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q28115813. VIAF identifies the subject as 44635271. The Library of Congress control number is n2004154164. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1975, 2013 and 2020.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Saru Jayaraman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.