Dr. Rebecca T. Alpert

Rebecca T. Alpert is Senior Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Professor of Religion at Temple University. She attended Barnard College before receiving her Ph.D. in religion at Temple University and her rabbinical training at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, Pennsylvania. She is the co-author of Exploring Judaism: A Reconstructionist Approach, author of Like Bread on the Seder Plate: Jewish Lesbians and the Transformation of Tradition and Whose Torah? A Concise Guide to Progressive Judaism as well as several edited volumes and numerous articles. Her specialization is religion in America, and with a focus on sexuality and race. She has recently taught courses on religion in American public life; Jews, America and sports, and sexuality in world religions. Out of Left Field: Jews and Black Baseball, was published by Oxford University Press in June 2011. Religion and Sports: An Introduction and Case Studies was published by Columbia University Press in May 2015. She is now at work on an edited anthology with Arthur Remillard, Gods, Games, and Globalization for Mercer University Press.

Mr. Majid Alsayegh

Principal of Alta Management, LLC, Mr. Alsayegh provides real estate development and project management services on large capital projects in both the public and private sectors. He has worked in several Mideast countries as well as the United States. He has worked with numerous organizations to promote better relations among diverse cultures. In addition to his role as Board chair, Majid has served on the Board of Directors for Intercultural Journeys, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Pyramid Society. He was recently appointed Chair of the Board of the Delaware Valley Community College. He has a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology and an M.S. in Management from the University of Pennsylvania Center for Energy and the Environment. Majid is the chair of the Dialogue Institute Board.

Dr. Vivienne Angeles

Associate professor at La Salle University in the Department of Religion. She  holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Temple University. She has published on the subjects of Muslim movements, Muslim women, visual expressions of Islam, and Islam in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. As a Fulbright scholar in Malaysia, she researched how Muslim identity is expressed visually through material culture. She co-edited Identity in Crossroad Civilizations: Ethnicity, Nationalism and Globalism in Asia and Gender, Religion and Migration: Pathways of Integration. Her current research interest focuses on women’s conversion to Islam in the Philippines and Malaysia. She is the past president of the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies, an affiliate of the Harvard University Pluralism Project, and the co-chair of the Religion in Southeast Asia group of the American Academy of Religion.

Dr. Gity Banan-Etemad

Professor of Pediatrics at Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia, and Attending Physician at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children and Temple University Hospital, Dr. Banan-Etemad is interested in “Health Development” in developing countries through NGO organizations, namely “Health for Humanity.” Through this organization, she has traveled extensively giving lectures on health issues in medical schools, hospitals, and public health institutions. She is a co-founder of the Interfaith Center of Greater Philadelphia, a founder of Mainline Interfaith Women's Group, and is a member of Devon Interfaith Gathering; these groups serve to promote dialogue for world peace. She is a fourth-generation Baha’i and an active member of national and local Baha’i communities. Dr. Banan-Etemad is also the secretary of the Dialogue Institute Board.

Mr. Howard Cohen

Experienced executive with an extensive background in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors, Mr. Cohen has held senior policy and executive positions in federal and state government and nonprofit enterprises. He has taught management and law at the university level for more than 30 years. Currently, Howard has an active management consulting and public policy practice and teaches courses in Business Ethics at Temple University’s Fox School of Business. Mr. Cohen is an active member of the Dialogue Institute Board.

Mr. Michael Cohen

Michael Cohen was born and raised in Cranford, New Jersey and went to college at the University of Delaware. As an undergraduate, he majored in History and Philosophy, with minors in Religious Studies and Ancient Greek and Roman Studies. Currently, he is a PhD student at Temple University in the Religious Studies department and works as a teaching assistant. Michael is interested in studying ancient Christianity and different early branches of Christian tradition, such as Gnosticism.

Dr. Andrew D. Ciferni

Andrew D. Ciferni is Director of the Center for Norbertine Studies at St. Norbert College. Born in Philadelphia he attended St. Norbert College before receiving his S.T.L. from The Gregorian University in Rome and Ph.D. in Liturgical Studies from The University of Notre Dame. Dr. Ciferni has taught courses on liturgy and the sacraments at Immaculata College , St. Norbert College (MTS), and for the Norbertine novices of Albuquerque, Daylesford, and De Pere as well as having held the position of Academic Dean at Washington Theological Union. In addition he has helped with the renovation and design of Roman Catholic worship spaces in Texas, Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia. Dr. Ciferni holds a mandatum (Ex Corde Ecclesiae) from the Archbishop of Washington, DC and the Archbishop of Philadelphia.

Dr. Hai-Lung Dai

As the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Chemistry, Dai's research in molecular and surface sciences is currently supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Army Research Laboratory, and American Chemical Society. He has published 160 articles, edited two books and five journal volumes .He has received numerous honors including: Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, Humboldt Fellowship from Germany, the Coblentz Prize in Molecular Spectroscopy, the Ellis Lippincott Award for Spectroscopy of the Optical Society of America, the Langmuir Lecturer Award in Colloid and Surface Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, the American Chemical Society Philadelphia Section Award, the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Institute of Chinese Engineers in the USA.

Dr. Perry Dane

Professor Dane received his B.A. Summa cum laude from Yale College and his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was Note Editor of the law journal and received the Israel H. here Peres Prize awarded by the faculty for the best student contribution to the Yale Law Journal. After law school, he clerked for Judge David Bazelon of the U.S. Court of Appeals and Justice William Brennan of the U.S. Supreme Court and then served for nine years on the Yale Law School faculty.

Professor Dane has written landmark articles on choice of law, religion and law, the jurisprudence of Jewish law, legal pluralism, and jurisdiction. He teaches courses in Conflicts of Law, Constitutional Law, American Indian Law, Jurisdiction, Law and Religion, Nonprofit Organizations, Education Law, the Canadian Legal System, and "The Debate on Same-Sex Marriage," and seminars on "Legalism" and "Religion and the State in Cross-National Perspective."

In January 1997, Professor Dane was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, teaching an intensive course on Religion and the Law. More recently, in January 2008, he taught a course on Religion and the State in Cross-National Perspective as a visiting professor at the University of Western Ontario Faculty of Law.

During the 2000-01 academic year, Professor Dane was a faculty fellow at the Rutgers Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture during their program on “Secularism.” During the 2010-11 academic year, Professor Dane was a full-time resident fellow at the Tikvah Center for Law & Jewish Civilization at the New York University Law School. He is presently a Faculty Affiliate of the Rutgers Institute for Law and Philosophy. He has also been a member of the national seminar of the Project on Religious Institutions at Yale University’s Program on Non-Profit Organizations, a guest of the Shalom Hartman Institute In Israel, and a participant in a variety of scholarly conferences around the nation and the world.

Professor Dane occasionally posts on the and St. John's Center for Law and Religion group blogs. In 2011, Professor Dane received the law school's inaugural Dean's Award for Scholarly Excellence.  His service to the larger Rugers community includes his current term as Chair of the Faculty Council representing all the units at Rutgers University-Camden.

Rabbi Albert Gabbai

Rabbi Albert Gabbai is the rabbi at Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia, which is an historic synagogue, founded in 1740 rebuilt by the government for America’s Bicentennial and contains many Sefer Torahs from pre-revolutionary times. Rabbi Gabbai was born in Egypt and came to the US in 1971, after being in an Egyptian prison for three years.

The spiritual leader of Congregation Mikveh Israel attended Yeshiva University but wanted a Sephardic smicha, so he went to Rabbi Sam Kassin and the Shehebar Sephardic Center to complete his studies, pass his tests and receive his ordination. He graduated in 1989.

Rabbi Gabbai has been the rabbi of Congregation Mikveh Israel for 22 years. During that time, he feels that the congregation has advanced in many ways. “The congregants are more knowledgeable about their heritage, they are more committed to Judaism, most of our children now attend Jewish day schools and we have many more services. Also, we have a very good track record at shiduchim, so within a year, there is a good chance we will marry off a single person.”

Dr. Kathleen Flake

Dr. Flake is the Richard Lyman Bushman Professor of Mormon Studies at the University of Virginia. Professor Flake's research in the area of American Religious History focuses on the adaptive strategies of 19th and 20th century American religious communities and the effect of pluralism on religious identity; she is also interested in the constructive function of text and ritual in maintaining and adapting the identity and gendered power structures of religious communities. In the area of American Legal History, she studies the influence of American law on American religion and the theological tensions inherent in the First Amendment religious clauses. Her current project is “Mormon Matriarchy, a Study of Gendered Power in Antebellum America.” Prior to her appointment at Virginia, she taught at Vanderbilt University in both the Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion. Before becoming an academic, she litigated cases on behalf of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Washington, D.C. She is the author of The Politics of Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. At UVA, she teaches courses such as Mormonism & American Culture, American Religious Innovation, Church-State Conflict, and Modern American Marriage in Historical Context.

Ms. Ellen Frankel

Editor Emerita of The Jewish Publication Society, Ms. Frankel retired as Editor-in- Chief at JPS in 2009, and she now travels widely as a storyteller, lecturer, and scholar-in- residence. She received her B.A. from the University of Michigan and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Princeton. She is currently working on a historical novel about the Dead Sea Scrolls, set in the 1st and 21st centuries. Ms. Frankel is a former Dialogue Institute Board member.

Dr. Dorie Friend, Dialogue Institute Board Member

Historian, novelist, and teacher of modern global history, Prof. Friend has been President of Swarthmore College (1973-1982) and President of Eisenhower Fellowships (1984-1996). An ecumenical Protestant, he is active in interfaith dialogue that embraces Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Baha’i, and Christians of every kind, and others of any kind. Dr. Friend is a Dialogue Institute Board member.

Rabbi Dr. Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer

Rabbi Nancy Fuchs Kreimer, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and the founding Director of the Department of Multifaith Studies and Initiatives at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College where she was ordained in 1982. She also holds a masters degree from Yale Divinity School and a doctorate from Temple University. With support from the Henry Luce Foundation, Nancy has pioneered innovative community based learning opportunities for rabbinical students and their Christian and Muslim peers. Her recent project, Cultivating Character: A Conversation  across Communities,” brings together Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and Humanist leaders. Nancy is a founding board member of the Interfaith Center of Philadelphia, Shoulder-to- Shoulder, and the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom. She co-edited Chapters of the Heart: Jewish Women Sharing the Torah of our Lives (Wipf and Stock, 2013).

Mr. Richard Hedberg

Elder at the Moromon Church of Latter Day Saints in Philadelphia, PA.

Rev. Dr.  John Hougen

Dr. Hougen John holds a BA in Sociology from Luther College (Iowa), a Master of Divinity Degree from Harvard Divinity School, and a PhD in Religion and Literature from the University of Virginia. Rev. John B. Hougen, PhD is an ordained pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and serves Interfaith Philadelphia in two capacities. He is Coordinator of Zones of Peace (Links to an external site.), an initiative of the Religious Leaders Council of Greater Philadelphia (Links to an external site.).In addition, John is the agency’s program leader for The Art of Interfaith Understanding (Links to an external site.), utilizing the resources of the Philadelphia Museum of Art to enhance spirituality and further interfaith understanding through encounters with art from the world’s religions.

Ms. Beth A. Twiss Houting

Beth A. Twiss Houting is the Senior Director of Programs and Services at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. She holds a B.A. in History from Pennsylvania State University and an M.A. from the University of Delaware in the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture with a Certificate in Museum Studies.

Dr. Saiyida Zakiya-Hasna Islam

Dr. Islam has worked for three decades as an educator and speaker in the USA. She was raised with an interfaith psyche due to a life that spanned four continents. She has taught in different countries and, consequently, has developed an insight into multiple cultures. With an early background in literature and cultural studies, her abiding interest has been in the study of faith and wisdom traditions. Having lived in multiple cultures since childhood, insights into the cultures deepened her spirituality. The primary purpose through it all was a search for the Truth. For the initial two decades in the U.S., she has been involved in volunteer work with adult literacy, adult ESL, peace activism, and the Threshold program for the prisoners in Philadelphia. Her other interests are to volunteer for the service of the elderly, to assist new immigrants to adapt to this clime and culture, and to help the inner city children and youth. She is currently working as an adjunct faculty member at Temple University. She is also a member of the board of the Women's Sacred Music Project and is actively engaged in the interfaith circuit of the Philadelphia region. She holds a PhD in religious studies from Temple University.

Ms. Natasha Johnson

Natasha's career is quite diverse as she has been able to practice in two areas of accounting that are dear to her heart, Tax and Royalty Accounting. Her tax path began her career as an accountant with a New York City tax services firm in 1998 where she sharpened her skills in individual and small business taxation. In later years she also worked as a Tax Associate for global accounting firm, KPMG, LLP. Natasha learned a great deal about royalty accounting at Arista Records and later Sony Music Entertainment. In 2003, Natasha left Sony to concentrate on Financial Bee full time. In addition Natasha currently teaches Individual and Corporate Tax at both Bucks County Community College and Delaware Technical Community College.

Ms. Shaheen Khan

Shaheen Khan has worked for the Public Affairs Section, U.S. Embassy Bangladesh for an extensive period.  As the primary educational liaison for the embassy, she helped senior leadership formulate educational and cultural outreach strategies in response to Bangladesh policy and trends in alignment with Mission strategy.  Ms. Khan directly administered academic exchange programs including the Fulbright student and scholar programs for both Bangladeshis and Americans. She also managed the Study of the U.S. Institute program. In the beginning of her career, she led the Educational Advising Program at the embassy and advised aspiring students and scholars on higher studies in the U.S.  She Served as the primary point of contact for the government, academic, and cultural circles on furthering U.S.-Bangladesh higher educational ties in accordance with the U.S. Embassy’s Mission strategy. Ms. Khan has a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. She also has a second master’s degree in public administration and community development from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

Ms. Kristyn Komarnicki

Kristyn is director of dialogue and convening at ESA/Sider Center. The creator of our, Oriented to Love dialogues about sexual/ gender diversity in the church, Kristyn facilitates (and trains others to facilitate) these two-day, intimate retreats that help Christians of different sexual/gender orientations and theological convictions come together to get to know, understand, and love each other, unified by the love of Christ. 

Kristyn edited ESA’s PRISM Magazine for 15 years, and she continues to delight in discovering and sharing the (extra) ordinary stories of Christians who put their faith into action. Her conviction that every life is precious and worth listening to fuels her work with people on the margins of the church and society.

Passionate about relational wholeness, she writes and speaks about both sexual justice and sexual exploitation.  In 2011, she won Christian for Biblical Equality’s Micah Award, which “honors those who exhibit courage, creativity, and tenacity in opposing abuse and advancing justice for women and children in Christ’s name.” Helping Christians understand that much of pornography is a form of hate speech and recognize its links to human trafficking is a particular concern of hers. She is a regular volunteer at a drop-in center for prostituted women in Philadelphia, where she listens to and learns from some of the most disenfranchised people in this country.

Dr. David M. Krueger

David M. Krueger is a scholar, author, and educator who is passionate about public history and social justice. He currently serves the Dialogue Institute as the Administrative Director, Scholars Program, Study of the United States Institute on Religious Freedom. His areas of expertise include American religious history, violence, myths, and popular culture. Dr. Krueger is a sought-after lecturer and speaker and has frequently served as a narrator and scholarly contributor on the Travel Channel and the Science Channel. He received a ThM from Princeton Theological Seminary and a PhD in religion from Temple University. His book, Myths of the Rune Stone: Viking Martyrs and the Birthplace of America was published by the University of Minnesota Press. Dr. Krueger is also a versatile and seasoned educator who has taught at Chestnut Hill College, Palmer Theological Seminary, Temple University, Rutgers University-Camden. He has served as a deacon in the United Methodist Church and regularly attends a Mennonite church with his family. He is also the assistant director for The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. Although he grew up as a farm kid in Minnesota, he has come to love Philadelphia and its fascinating history since moving there in 1995. Articles and essays he has written have appeared in Religion Dispatches, the Believe Out Loud blog, the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, the Religion in American History blog, and Marginalia: A Los Angeles Review of Books Channel. He is certified by the Association of Philadelphia Tour to offer guided tours of religious and historical sites in the city.

Ms. Nancy Krody

Former Managing Editor of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies since in 1973. Her interest in ecumenical activities began through campus ministry at Ohio State as an undergraduate, where American Baptists and Disciples of Christ had joint campus work. One of the first open lesbians in mainline Christianity, she co-coordinated the U.C.C. Gay Caucus in the early 1970’s, and is currently on the advisory board of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Religious Archives Network and of U.C.C. and interfaith LGBT organizations in the Greater Philadelphia area.

Dr. Brett Krutzsch

Brett Krutzsch is a scholar of religion in the United States with a particular focus on sexuality, gender, race, and politics. His first book, Dying to be Normal: Gay Martyrs and the Transformation of American Sexual Politics, is under contract with Oxford University Press. The book examines how gay activists memorialized particular deaths for political purposes and, in turn, it demonstrates how secular gay activists used Christian rhetoric and values to portray gay Americans as upstanding citizens who were worthy of greater rights. Professor Krutzsch’s other research focuses on religious responses to queer parenting and adoption, and the rise of “religious freedom” laws as a conservative political strategy to impede LGBTQ legal advances. He has a B.A. from Emory University, an M.A. from New York University, and a Ph.D from Temple University.

Ms. Andi Laudisio

Andi is the Administrative and Development Coordinator for the Dialogue institute. She is a doctoral candidate at Temple University in the Religion department. Her dissertation focuses on the sectarian violence that plagued Iraq after the ratification of the 2005 Iraqi constitution. Andis studies include Islam, the 2003 United States Invasion of Iraq, and the Iraqi constitution. She attended Arizona State University for her MA in Religious studies, focusing on the Bremer Period of Iraq (2003-2007). Andi earned her BA in Cultural Anthropology from University at Buffalo with a minor in Linguistics and a focus on Spanish. Her teaching experience includes leading Health and Wellness seminars for youth as well as teaching ESL to adult refugees in Buffalo, Phoenix, and Philadelphia. Andi has worked with the Dialogue Institute as a Program Associate for three years before joining the institute full time.

Dr. Christine Larocco

Editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography and Scholarly Programs Manager at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Dr. Larocco  is a historian of women and social movements. She gives talks on HSP collections related to women’s participation in abolitionism, the nineteenth-century women’s rights movement, suffrage, Progressivism, the civil rights movement, second-wave feminism, and more.

Sheikh Ghassan Manasra

Ghassan is one of the Abrahamic Reunion’s Co-Coordinators (With Eliyahu McLean) in the Holy Land. He is an ordained Sheikh in the Qadiri Sufi Order in the Holy Land, and son of Sheikh Abdel Salaam Manasra – head of the Qadiri Sufi Order in the Holy Land. He is the founder of Anwar-Il-Salaam, the Lights of Peace Center in Nazareth, and  is Director, Islamic Cultural Center in Nazareth. Ghassan is an expert and lectures in Islam, Islamic history, Sufism, and contemporary Muslim issues in the Middle East, Europe, and the USA. He is married to daughter of late Sheikh Baghdadi, renowned Muslim leader, and Holy Land facilitator in interfaith dialogue projects. Ghassan has received multiple awards and accolades for his peacemaking, including most recently the 2014 “Outstanding Leader in Interreligious Dialogue Award” from the renowned Dialogue Institute at Temple University. He now lives in Florida with family.

Ms. Rebecca Mays

Rebecca Mays began as the DI's Executive Director in 2012 and then transitioned in 2017 to a customized role as Director of Education, focusing more specifically on program development while also working to complete her Ph.D dissertation from Temple’s Department of Religion. Rebecca brings professional publishing expertise and strong teaching experience as a Quaker educator to her role. She has taught internationally and served on the Christian and Interfaith committee of the Friends General Conference, and has represented Quaker interest in interfaith work at the 1998 Assembly of the World Council of Churches. She presently serves as a representative on the administrative group of the Philadelphia Religious Leaders’ Council.

Prior to coming to Temple in 2008, Rebecca served as the director of a Master's program in English and Publishing at Rosemont College. She holds a B.A. in English from Earlham College and an M.A. in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. She completed her M.A. in Religious Studies at Temple as a graduate fellow and intern at the DI prior to joining the staff.

Dr. Mary Beth Matthews 

Dr. Mary Beth Swetnam Mathews teaches courses in American and European religious history, and her areas of specialty include American religious history, Protestant fundamentalism and evangelicalism, African-American religions, and religion and politics in the United States.

Her published work includes Doctrine and Race: African American Evangelicals and Fundamentalism Between the Wars (University of Alabama Press, 2017) and Rethinking Zion: How the Print Media Placed Fundamentalism in the South (University of Tennessee Press, 2006), and she has given presentations at numerous conferences. Between college and graduate school, Dr. Mathews worked on Capitol Hill, first with a U.S. Senator and then a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. She earned a PhD from the University of Virginia.

Dr. Justin McDaniel

Dr. Justin McDaniel is the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies and Professor of Buddhist and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. After living and researching in South and Southeast Asia for many years as a translator, archivist, amulet collector, volunteer teacher, and Buddhist monk, he returned to the States and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University’s Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies in 2003. His research foci include Lao, Thai, Pali, and Sanskrit literature, Southeast Asian Buddhism, ritual studies, manuscript studies, asceticism, and general phantasmagoria. In 2012 he was named a Guggenheim Fellow.

Dr. Paul Mojzes

Dr. Paul Mojzes is Chair of the Religious Studies and Humanities Department at Rosemont College, in Pennsylvania, USA. A native of Yugoslavia, Dr. Mojzes is the co-editor of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, and founder and co-editor of Religion in Eastern Europe. He is the author of six books including his most recent Balkan Genocides: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the Twentieth Century. Dr. Mojzes has lectured at universities throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Dr. Peter Ochs

Peter Ochs is the Edgar M. Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia, where he has served since 1997. He is an influential thinker whose interests include Jewish philosophy and theology, modern and postmodern philosophical theology, pragmatism, and semiotics. Ochs coined the term "scriptural reasoning" and is the co-founder (with Anglican theologian David F. Ford) the Society for Scriptural Reasoning, which promotes interfaith dialogue among Christians, Jews, and Muslims through scriptural study groups. He is also a co-founder of the Children of Abraham Institute, which promotes interfaith study and dialog among members of the Abrahamic religions. Some of the courses he teaches include Religion, Politics, and Conflict, Religion and Foreign Affairs, “God” (in Abrahamic and other traditions), and The Religions of Abraham in Peace and Conflict.

Dr. Deven Patel

Dr.  Patel teaches in the Department of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His focus is on the intersection of language, literature, and culture in a South Asia. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.A. from Columbia University. His Research and Teaching Interests: Sanskrit language and literature (belles-lettres, epics, and drama); traditions of South Asian grammar and linguistics; the history, aesthetics, and reception of Indian literatures; Indian philosophy and intellectual history; Pali, Prakit, Hindi and Gujarati language and literature; translation theory. He is also the author of Text to Tradition: The Naiṣadhīyacarita and Literary Community in South Asia. Columbia University Press, 2014.

Ms. Lori Pompa

Lori Pompa has been going into prisons for more than 30 years and has taken thousands of students (and others) into correctional facilities through a variety of courses and exchanges during that time. She has been on the Criminal Justice faculty at Temple University since 1992, and is Founder and Executive Director of The Inside-Out Center at Temple University, International Headquarters of The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, which she began as a single class in 1997. As a 2003 Soros Justice Senior Fellow, Lori collaborated with others on both sides of the prison wall to develop Inside-Out into an international model of transformative pedagogy.

Over the past 22 years, more than 1000 college and university instructors from throughout the U.S. and several other countries have taken part in the Inside-Out Training Institute, of which 63 have been held to date. She has co-facilitated each of those trainings. Hundreds of Inside-Out classes have been offered so far, involving more than 37,000 inside (incarcerated) and outside (campus-based) students. Lori regularly speaks about Inside-Out’s history and contributions, most notably at the Clinton School of Public Service, at the Fetzer Institute’s Global Gathering on Love and Forgiveness in Assisi, Italy, at the University of Sydney in Australia, and at Durham University in the U.K.

Dr. Terry Rey

Associate Professor, Department of Religion, Temple University. Educated at universities on four continents, and having lived ten years of his adult life in Zaire and Haiti, Professor Rey specializes in the anthropology and history of African and African diaspora religions. His current research projects focus on violence and religion in Central African and Haitian history.

Dr. Fred Rowland

Reference Librarian for Classics, Economics, Philosophy, and Religion, Paley Library, Temple University

Ms. Chelsea Roberts

Assistant Vice President & Branch Manager at PNC Bank Corp.

Dr. Ronald J. Sider

Dr. Ron Sider  is a Distinguished Senior Professor of Theology, Holistic Ministry, and Public Policy at Palmer Theological Seminary. He is known worldwide for providing leadership to the movement of evangelicals who recognize not just the spiritual, but also the social and political implications of a high view of Scripture. His book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger was lauded by Christianity Today as being among the top 100 books in religion in the 20th century and the seventh most influential book in the evangelical world in the last 50 years.

Professor Leonard Swidler

"Prof. Len" is a Professor of Catholic Thought and Interreligious Dialogue in the Religion Department of Temple University, where he has taught since 1966. At Temple, and as a visiting professor at universities around the world – including Graz, Austria; Tübingen, Germany; Fudan University, Shanghai; and the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur – he has mentored a generation of U.S. and international scholars in the work of interreligious dialogue. He has a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from the University of Tübingen and received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Wisconsin; he also holds honorary doctorates from St. Norbert’s College and LaSalle University.Leonard has published/edited more than 200 articles and 75 books, including: Jewish-Christian-Muslim Dialogue (1978); Religious Liberty and Human Rights (1986); After the Absolute: The Dialogical Future of Religious Reflection (1990); A Bridge to Buddhist-Christian Dialogue (1990); Muslims in Dialogue: The Evolution of a Dialogue over a Generation (1992); Jesus Was a Feminist (2007).

Rev. Howard Dean Trulear, PhD

Dr. Trulear has served as Associate Professor of Applied Theology at Howard University School of Divinity since 2003. He currently teaches Prophetic Ministry, Ethics and Politics, Ministry and Criminal Justice, and Church and Community Studies.

Prior to joining the Howard Divinity faculty, he has also taught at Eastern University, Yale University, Colgate Rochester Divinity School, The Center for Urban Theological Studies (Geneva College), and Jersey City State College.

His administrative experience includes Dean for First Professional Programs at New York Theological Seminary (1990-96) and Vice President for Faith Based Initiatives at Public/Private Ventures (1998-2001). He also served as pastor of churches in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and he is currently a pastoral associate at Praise and Glory Tabernacle in Philadelphia.

Dr. Trulear has lectured for university, church and professional organizations across the country, including Fuller Theological Seminary, Rice University, Baylor University, Tuskegee University, Southern University, Payne Theological Seminary, Princeton University, the American Baptist Churches/USA, the Mount Sinai Holy Church of America, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, the North American Association of Christians in Social Work and the NAACP.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Morehouse College (1975), he completed his Ph.D. with distinction at Drew University (1983). Dr. Trulear is the author of over 100 articles, book chapters, essays and published sermons. His important monographs include "Faith Based Initiatives with High Risk Youth," "The African American Church and Welfare Reform," and "George Kelsey: Unsung Hero." He directs a national research and demonstration project called "Healing Communities," mobilizing congregations to support those returning from incarceration through the establishment of family and social support networks. With Charles Lewis and W. Wilson Goode, he is co-editor of the book Ministry with Prisoners and Families: The Way Forward (Judson Press 2011).

Through his research and activism he has been named a Fellow at the Center for Public Justice in Annapolis, Maryland, and served as a consultant to the Faith and Families portfolio of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. In 2014, Dr. Trulear was named as one of "14 Faith Leaders to Watch" by the Center for American Progress. He also serves as a member of the Executive Session on Community Corrections at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Rev. Dr. Mark Tyler

Mark Kelly Tyler is a native of Oakland, CA and he is the third child of Bill and Elroy Tyler. In 1987, he accepted God’s call to preach the liberating Gospel of Jesus Christ. He is an ordained Itinerant Elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.  

Dr. Tyler is a graduate of both Clark Atlanta University with a Bachelor in Religion and Payne Theological Seminary where he received his Masters of Divinity. Upon graduation from Payne, Dr. Tyler went into full time pastoral ministry in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. During his time as senior pastor, God has truly blessed his work. He has received into membership scores of persons, overseen major renovations at multiple properties across the country, and has been privileged to serve numerous congregations throughout the U.S.

Dr. Tyler has also been active in the world of Theological Education, while serving as a pastor. He has served as the Director of Church Relations and Alumni Affairs at Payne Theological Seminary in Wilberforce, Ohio and as the Director of Church Vocations at New Brunswick Theological Seminary in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He is currently a fully affiliated faculty member at the Methodist Theological Seminary of Ohio. Dr. Tyler earned a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from the University of Dayton (Ohio) and his current research is focused on the history of clergy education in the African Methodist Episcopal Church during the mid-19th century. He hopes to soon complete the first major publication on the pioneering efforts of 19th century AMEC clergy in the field of theological education. 

Dr. Tyler led the drive to secure the funding for Bishop Richard Allen: Apostle of Freedom (The Documentary), serving as Executive Producer and Writer on the project. He also served as the Producer and Writer for the Council of Bishops’ production of The Anvil: Echoes from the General Conference which made its debut at the 2012 General Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Dr. Tyler appeared in the "Skip" Gates six part PBS series entitled The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. Additionally, Dr. Tyler has appeared in various documentaries, including: The Scroll: Evidence of the Life Unseen, Volume 2; the PBS series, A Taste of History; Philadelphia: The Great Experiment; and, Philly Firsts. 

Dr. Tyler currently holds the esteemed honor of serving as the 52nd pastor of Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Mother Bethel, founded by African Methodist Episcopal Church founder Bishop Richard Allen, has been a spiritual, social, and community force since the late 1700s. Mother Bethel is known throughout the world and continues to be a beacon of hope and light for those who are lost and in need of direction. 

Dr. Tyler is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. and in his spare time enjoys traveling to new places, mountain bike riding, and roller skating. He and his wife, Leslie, live in the metropolitan Philadelphia area. He has four wonderful children.

Dr. Mark Wallace

Dr. Wallace is the Professor of Religion and Interpretation Theory Coordinator at Swarthmore College. He is Ph.D. graduate from the University of Chicago, Professor in the Department of Religion, and member of the Interpretation Theory Committee and the Environmental Studies Committee at the College. His teaching and research interests focus on the intersections between Christian theology, critical theory, environmental studies, and postmodernism.

Rabbi Mira Beth Wasserman, PhD

Mira Beth Wasserman’s work as a rabbi and scholar bridges Talmud study, community building and the pursuit of social justice. In her current book project, she argues for drawing on Rabbinic literature—the Talmud in particular—as a model for contemporary ethical deliberation. 

Before pursuing her doctorate, Rabbi Wasserman served as rabbi at Congregation Beth Shalom in Bloomington, IN, for over a decade.  As rabbi, she facilitated three lay-led minyanim and initiated a full-day Jewish preschool and kindergarten. She also published a children’s book, Too Much of a Good Thing (Kar Ben, 2003), based on Talmudic stories that she shared with her youngest congregants.

Rabbi Wasserman’s doctorate in Jewish Studies from the University of California at Berkeley. Her rabbinic ordination is from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and she is an alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Hebrew Literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary and a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies from Barnard College.

Mr. Tyrone Werts

Tyrone Werts, a founding member of Inside-Out's original Think Tank, coordinates public relations and correctional outreach for the Inside-Out Center in Philadelphia. Out of prison after 36 years through a governor's commutation in 2011, Werts was formerly president of the Lifers Association inside SCI-Graterford. Werts was recently named a Soros Justice Fellow for his Public Safety Initiative, which calls on the many resources of formerly imprisoned Philadelphians in a coordinated effort to end the culture of street crime.

Dr. Marianne S. Wokeck

Marianne S. Wakeck is Chancellor’s Professor of History at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, where she teaches early American history and directs the Institute for American Thought. She was educated in Germany and the United States. Her major research interests in the history of the North Atlantic World (1600-1800) focus on immigration and ethnicity, including the role of religion in defining identity, and also on scholarly editing. Those interests are reflected in her publications as author and editor (Trade in Strangers; The Papers of William Penn; Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania; The Works of George Santayana; and Immigrant Entrepreneurship: German-American Business Biographies (Links to an external site.).

Dr. Homayra Ziad

Dr. Homayra Ziad is the Scholar of Islam at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies. Dr. Ziad was formerly Assistant Professor of Religion at Trinity College in Hartford. After receiving her first degree   from Bryn Mawr, she earned a doctorate in Islamic Studies from Yale University. Homayra is deeply involved in interreligious education and training, as well as local, national and international interfaith initiatives and educational outreach on Islam. She is recently co-founder and co-chair of the American Academy of Religion’s Interreligious and Interfaith Studies Group, and co-founder/co-editor for the Palgrave series Interreligious Studies in Theory and Practice. Homayra’s research is in Indo-Persianate Islamic traditions, and she situates pre-colonial and early colonial India squarely within the Islamicate world. Much of her research is concerned with projects of reconciliation, and the hermeneutical struggle inherent in the encounter between systems of knowledge and identity-creation.

New York City Program

Imam Talib Abdur-Rashid

Imam Al-Hajj Talib ‘Abdur-Rashid is the religious and spiritual leader of The Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood Inc. The mosque, located in Harlem, New York City, is the lineal descendant of the Muslim Mosque Inc. founded by the late El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X), in 1964. Imam ‘Abdur-Rashid is also Ameer (President) Emeritus of the Majlis Ash-Shura (Islamic Leadership Council) of Metropolitan New York. Nationally, he serves as the Deputy Ameer (Vice President) of The Muslim Alliance in North America.

Dr. Zain Abdullah

Associate Professor in the Religion Department at Temple. He holds a doctorate in cultural anthropology from the New School for Social Research in New York City. He is a faculty affiliate in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies. His current work focuses on the interplay of race, religion and ethnicity, and his writings cover an array of topics including Islamic Studies and contemporary Islam, African American Muslims and Islam in America, religion and society, African Diaspora Studies, globalization and transnationalism and inter-group dynamics. He is the author of Black Mecca: The African Muslims of Harlem. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010, A God of Our Own: Malcolm X and His Battle for the Soul of America (forthcoming book), and Temple 25: Black Religiosity and the Rise of American Islam (forthcoming book).

Dr. Robert Quinn

Robert Quinn is the founding Executive Director of the Scholars at Risk Network, an independent not-for-profit corporation based at New York University. 

Mr. Quinn formerly served as a member of the Council of the Magna Charta Observatory, based in Bologna, Italy; Executive Director of the Institute of International Education’s Scholar Rescue Fund; on the Steering Committee of the Network for Education and Academic Rights (NEAR), based in London, UK; a member of the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; a member of the Scientific Committee of Pax Academica, an online journal on academic freedom in Africa published by CODESRIA from Dakar, Senegal; a fellow with the Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows Program in Washington, DC. He received an A.B. cum laude from Princeton in 1988, a J.D. cum laude from Fordham in 1994, and an honorary doctorate from Illinois Wesleyan University in 2010. In 2012, Mr. Quinn and Scholars at Risk received the University of Oslo’s human rights award, the Lisl and Leo Eitinger Prize, for “relentless work to protect the human rights of academics and for having inspired and engaged others to stress the importance of academic freedom.”

Study Tour – Arizona

Luke Barnett

Luke Barnett is the senior pastor of Dream City Church, formerly Phoenix First. After serving as executive pastor at the church for six years and lead pastor for two years, he transitioned to the role of senior pastor with a stronger vision than ever to take the church where it has yet to go. His creative ideas, visionary leadership and focus on relationships have sparked new growth in the church.

Rev. Tommy Barnett

Tommy is an author, the co-pastor of Dream City Church, an Assemblies of God megachurch in Phoenix, Arizona. Dream City Church has branded itself as "the church with a heart", reporting over 275 active outreach ministries. Tommy Barnett began his ministry at age sixteen. Before moving to Phoenix, Barnett pastored Westside Assembly of God in Davenport, Iowa. In just a few years, the church grew from 76 people to more than 4,000 members. In 1979, he became the pastor of Dream City Church. The church has grown under his leadership over the past three decades. As of 2011, it was the second largest Assembly of God church in the U.S. with an average Sunday attendance of 10,000. In 2011, Barnett turned over the senior pastor's post to his younger son, Luke; he remains as co-pastor.

Rev. Larry Fultz

Rev. Fultz is no stranger to AZIFM having been a member of the Arizona Interfaith Movement from its very beginnings in 1995 and serving on various boards and committees even up to the present time. After receiving his BA, Masters in Theology and a Masters in Counseling Rev. Fultz became a minister in 1969 and before retiring in December 2005. Larry’s life is rich with interfaith activity and experience having been a part of the beginning of the InterFaith Action Coalition of Arizona (AZIFM’s prior name). He participated in the first “Experience Interfaith” event as a speaker and participant. He was active in helping organize and produce the first “Voices of Faith” concert and those afterwards. He was present in 2003 when the declaration was granted to make Arizona the First Golden Rule State in the Union. He participated in the campaign for the “Live the Golden Rule “License Plate and was present at the signing of the bill. Larry participated in the Interfaith Habitat for Humanity building project in Phoenix and has appeared on radio and television as part of the Arizona Interfaith Movement’s Speaker’s Bureau. In 2002 he participated in the United Nations Committee of Religious NGO’s to go to Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania to aid the Muslim refugees in their plight, helping build refugee camps, counseling and education. Larry’s life work has been devoted to bringing peace, understanding and the love of God to all people.

Ms. Ruth Hartog

7 Center’s Director & Course Leader, began her journey into yoga in 1991 with the study and teaching of Kundalini yoga in Los Angeles. In 1994 she initiated with Swami Niranjananda in the Satyananda Saraswati lineage through the Bihar School of Yoga in Mungyr, India at which time she was given the spiritual name of Sraddhasagar (Ocean of Faith) While on that five month long pilgrimage she met Rama Jyoti Vernon leading a Yoga for Peace conference in Jerusalem and began studying with her in Hatha Yoga, the Yoga Sutras and Conflict Resolution in 1999. Rama’s mentorship of asana and pranayama as a way of practicing the yoga philosophy of the Sutras is foundational in all immersions. In addition, Muhammed Faust & Viskashananda of Nepal have been important teachers of transmission for kundalini yoga and the deeper understanding of yogic philosophy. Ruth has also been a practitioner of Vipassana Meditation as taught by S.N. Goenka for the past 25 years.

Dr. Chris Jocks

Chris Jocks (Kahnawake Mohawk) is a Senior Lecturer in Applied Indigenous Studies at Northern Arizona University, where he earned a PhD 1994. Dr. Jocks devotes himself to the ongoing translation of Indigenous thought into action. He is especially interested in local, grassroots, community-based efforts to strengthen traditional social relations and decision-making in the midst of historical change, among Indigenous communities in Canada as well as the U.S. Language, religion or worldview, sovereignty, sustainability, and gender relations are all critical components of his work.

Rev. Eric Kee

Eric Kee, along with his wife, Tracy, serve as a full-time missionaries in Tuba City, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation while working as the full time ministers at the Tuba City Church of Christ.

Dr. Bjorn Krondorfer

Professor of Comparative Study of Religions and Endowed Director of Martin-Springer Institute, Dr. Krondorfer completed his Ph.D. in (Comparative) Religious Studies at Temple University, Philadelphia. He came to the United States in 1983 from his native Germany after pursuing studies in theology at the University of Frankfurt and Göttingen. Before joining NAU in the fall of 2012, he taught for twenty years in the Department of Religious Studies and Philosophy at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, the public Honors College of the State of Maryland.

Mr. Sergio Mazza

Retired from his work as President of the American National Standard Institute, after a long career in Information Technology, Mr. Mazza completed his MA in Religion at the Hartford Seminary. He is an avid interfaith activist who leads study groups in Sedona, AZ. Mr. Mazza was a long serving member of the Dialogue Institute Board and is now serving as its Executive Director.

Mr. Duane Oakes

Duane Oakes has been with Mesa Community College since 2000, and is Faculty Director for the Center for Community & Civic Engagement. He’s also been advisor to MCC’s award-winning Phi Theta Kappa student scholars organization, one of the nation’s largest. He has won numerous awards for his leadership roles in student life, Phi Theta Kappa, and service learning, and he was previously director of student leadership at Chandler-Gilbert Community College.

Duane Oakes’ passion for helping students achieve success is what sets him apart. Colleagues rave about his department, his staff calls their operation a well-oiled machine because of Duane, and students, past and present, know his kindness and generosity of spirit. His commitment to the ideals of service learning, community service and scholarship are strong, but no stronger than his dedication to instill those ideals in the students he serves. In this, Duane never wavers: students come first.

Duane graduated from MCC in 1986 with an Associate degree, and has Bachelors and Masters degrees from Brigham Young University. He has made numerous presentations nationally on Service Learning, and won college and district Innovation of the Year awards for developing the Service Learning program during his time at CGCC. He won the Arizona Governor’s Volunteer Service Award in 2004. Because of Duane’s efforts, MCC has been named to the U.S. President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll since 2006 and recently achieved the coveted Community Engagement Classification from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Pastor Cindy Parker

Pastor of The Church of the Red Rocks.

Ms. Jannah Scott

Jannah Scott is the Deputy Director, DHS Center at US Department of Homeland Security and a Strategist, Planner, Advisor, and Public Policy Expert. She has served in many capacities with government and the private sector for over 30 years. Jannah served for eight years as U.S. Department of Homeland Security as Deputy Director, Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Jannah partnered with elected officials and public safety leaders in jurisdictions across the county to promote the engagement of the private sector on issues of emergency preparedness, response

Washington D.C. and Virginia Program

Dr. Rebecca Carter- Chand

Dr. Carter- Chand  is a Program Officer in the Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust within the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Previously, a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University (2017-18) and a full-time lecturer at Lakehead University, Orillia (2016-17). She taught undergraduate and graduate courses on the Holocaust, twentieth-century Europe, and the intersection of Christianity and genocide. 

I received her PhD in History and the Collaborative Program in Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto in 2016. My dissertation, “Doing Good in Bad Times: The Salvation Army in Germany, 1886-1946,” analyzes the Salvation Army’s negotiation of its international and national identities through periods of significant political and social upheaval and its role as a minority church and social service organization in the Nazi period. In 2012-13 she was the Cummings Foundation Fellow at the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

Mr. Benjamin Marcus

Benjamin P. Marcus is the Religious Literacy Specialist with the Religious Freedom Center of the Freedom Forum Institute, where he examines the intersection of education, religious literacy, and identity formation in the United States.

He has developed religious literacy programs for public schools, universities, U.S. government organizations, and private foundations, and he has delivered presentations on religion at universities and nonprofits in the U.S. and abroad. He has worked closely with the U.S. State Department, Interfaith Youth Core, the Foundation for Religious Literacy, and the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme in the United Kingdom.

In February 2018, Marcus was accepted as a Fulbright Specialist for a period of three years. As a Specialist, he will share his expertise on religion and education with select host institutions abroad.

Marcus chaired the writing group for the Religious Studies Companion Document to the C3 Framework, a nationally recognized set of guidelines used by state and school district curriculum experts for social studies standards and curriculum development. He is a contributing author in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook on Religion and American Education, where he writes about the importance of religious literacy education. In 2015 he served as executive editor of the White Paper of the Sub-Working Group on Religion and Conflict Mitigation of the State Department’s Religion and Foreign Policy Working Group.

Marcus earned an MTS with a concentration in Religion, Ethics, and Politics as a Presidential Scholar at Harvard Divinity School. He studied religion at the University of Cambridge and Brown University, where he graduated magna cum laude.

Dr. Matthew Hedstrom

Dr. Hedstrom is a historian of the United States specializing in religion and culture in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His central questions probe the intersections of American modernity and Protestant and post-Protestant religious modernity in the United States. He also has a longstanding and ongoing interest in the history of the book, especially as it applies to American religious history. Race, religion and psychology, the history of spirituality, mass culture, religious liberalism, cosmopolitanism and internationalism all figure into my research and teaching.

He is now researching and writing a book called The Religion of Humanity: Faith, Politics, and the United Nations. This book explores the deep religious history of the United Nations—the religion of the UN as much as religion in and about the UN. The project reaches back into the nineteenth century and forward to the late twentieth, but is centrally concerned with the UN and its American religious contexts, conflicts, and constituencies in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. The long arc of the plot follows the intersecting histories of two great liberal dreams of the modern age—the religious vision of a “religion of humanity” and the political vision of world government—as they converged and diverged across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  Read more here (Links to an external site.). Dr. Hedstrom teaches several courses including Historiography Seminar in American Religion, “Spiritual But Not Religious”: Spirituality in America, Theories and Methods of American Studies, Varieties of Religious Experience, Christian America?: Religious Diversity and National Identity, and Visions of Apocalypse in American Culture. His first book, The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century, employs novel sources in book history to tell the surprising story of religious liberalism’s cultural ascendancy in the twentieth century. The religious middlebrow culture of mid-century brought psychological, mystical, and cosmopolitan forms of spirituality to broad swaths of the American middle class. This book was awarded the 2013 Brewer Prize from the American Society for Church History.

Dr. Patricia Maulden

Patricia A. Maulden is Associate Professor of Conflict Resolution and Director of the Dialogue and Difference Project with The School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz and her Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University. As part of an ongoing research project she exploring community based peace education in Sierra Leone and Burundi, and, building on a recent field assessment in Liberia, organized a palaver management project bringing students to Liberia to work with local youth-focused organizations. Domestically, Dr. Maulden researches and teaches about youth gangs as well as gang-related community peacemaking programs. As a practitioner, she conducts seminars on interpersonal conflict resolution, facilitates intergenerational and interethnic dialogues, and has served as a restorative justice caseworker. As Director of the Dialogue and Difference Project at George Mason University, she plans dialogue events, trains student facilitators, and writes practice related curriculum.

Ms. Julia McStravog 

Julia is the Program Manager for the Program on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust.

Dr. Abdulaziz Sachedina

Abdulaziz Sachedina, Ph.D., is Professor and IIIT Chair in Islamic Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.  Dr. Sachedina, who has studied in India, Iraq, Iran, and Canada, obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. He has been conducting research and writing in the field of Islamic Law, Ethics, and Theology (Sunni and Shiite) for more than two decades.  In the last ten years he has concentrated on social and political ethics, including Interfaith and Intrafaith Relations, Islamic Biomedical Ethics and Islam and Human Rights. Dr. Sachedina’s publications include: Islamic Messianism (State University of New York, 1980); Human Rights and the Conflicts of Culture, co-authored (University of South Carolina, 1988) The Just Ruler in Shiite Islam (Oxford University Press, 1988); The Prolegomena to the Qur’an (Oxford University Press, 1998), The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism (Oxford University Press, 2002), Islamic Biomedical Ethics: Theory and Application (Oxford University Press, February 2009),  Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights (Oxford University Press, September 2009), in addition to numerous articles in academic journals. He is an American citizen born in Tanzania. Fields of interests are Religion and Politics, Islamic Law and Ethics, Sunni and Shiite Theologies, Biomedical Ethics, Human Rights, Democracy and Pluralism, Spirituality and Mysticism.

Rabbi David Saperstein

Director Emeritus, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and Senior Advisor to the URJ for Policy and Strategy 

Designated by Newsweek Magazine as the most influential rabbi in America and by the Washington Post as the “quintessential religious lobbyist on Capitol Hill,” David Saperstein, for decades, directed the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, representing the Reform Jewish Movement, the largest segment of American Jewry, to Congress and the Administration.

For over two years (2015-2017), Rabbi Saperstein served our nation as the U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, carrying out his responsibilities as the country’s chief diplomat on religious freedom issues.  Also an attorney, he taught seminars on Church –State law and Jewish Law for 35 years at Georgetown University Law Center.

During his career, Rabbi Saperstein has served as the chair or co-chair of several national interreligious coalitions including the Coalition to Preserve Religious Liberty and served on the boards or executive committees of numerous national organizations including the NAACP, People for The American Way, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the National Religious Partnership on the Environment and the World Faith Development Dialogue.

A prolific writer and speaker, Rabbi Saperstein has appeared on a number of television news and talk shows including Oprah, Nightline, Lehrer News Hour, ABC's Sunday Morning, Crossfire, the Rachel Maddow Show, Hardball, Meet the Press, and the O'Reilly Factor. His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, New York Times, and Harvard Law Review. His latest book is Jewish Dimensions of Social Justice: Tough Moral Choices of Our Time. 

He currently serves as a Senior Fellow at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service's Center for Jewish Civilization as well as the Senior Advisor for Strategy and Policy for the Union for Reform Judaism.

Rabbi Saperstein is married to Ellen Weiss, an award-winning journalist and has two sons, Daniel and Ari.

Ms. Ann Schroeder, Treasurer of the Dialogue Institute Board

Ann Schroeder is the founder and CEO of GlobalSource Partners, Inc. and serves as the company's Chief Executive Officer. The firm, founded in 1994 as LatinSource, later merged into GlobalSource Partners to service growing client needs across emerging markets globally, and currently provides coverage on twenty-four developing countries. Ms. Schroeder has been involved in the financial services industry since 1984, initially working as a financial consultant with Shearson Lehman Brothers, and later with Institutional Analysts, a company providing management and publishing services for independent analysts. Ms. Schroeder received a B.A. from Trinity University, an M.B.A. from Fordham University, and a certificate in Political Psychology from George Washington University, Elliott School of International Affairs. She is a past member of the Women Presidents’ Organization and served on the Board of Directors of Pro Mujer, a microfinance entity providing loans, business training and healthcare support across Latin America. Dr. Schroeder is a member of the Dialogue Institute Board.