Biography

Sadhvi Siddhali Shree is a US based Jain monk, film director, author, TEDx speaker, Iraq War veteran and activist. She is mostly known for her two documentaries Stopping Traffic (2017) and Surviving Sex Trafficking (2022) which are based on the global problem of human and sex trafficking. Sadhvi Siddhali Shree was raised in a Catholic family and she dissociated herself from the Catholic Church after completing her high school education. She enrolled herself as a medic in the US Army as a senior while studying in High School. At the age of 20, she first met with her spiritual guru Acharya Shree Yogeesh. Later she was asked to serve in the Iraq war. She suffered from slight PTSD after her deployment in Iraq as a US Army Combat Medic Sergeant from which she claimed Jain thoughts and guidance from her guru helped her to recover. Sadhvi Siddhali Shree was initiated by Acharya Shree Yogeesh in 2008 at the age of 24 becoming the first non-Indian to take initiation in Jainism outside of India. In the same year she joined Siddhayatan as the spiritual director. She also serves as the director of International Society of Human Unity. She is known to be the first "North American Jain female-monk".