Audrey E. Kitagawa, JD, is the Chair of Board of Trustees of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, President of the Light of Awareness International Spiritual Family, President/Founder of the International Academy for Transcultural Cooperation, and the former Advisor to the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict at the United Nations. She is a United Nations Representative for the United Religions Initiative, and Chair Emerita of the NGO Committee on Spirituality, Values and Global Concerns, A Committee of the Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations. She is the author of dozens of chapters in a variety of publications on a range of topics from multiculturalism to Asian women to globalization to religious and ethnic conflict to cultural diversity, identity, world affairs and the transformation of consciousness. She has been listed in Who’s Who of American Law, Who’s Who of American Women, Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in The World, and Prominent People of Hawaii. She is the recipient of the Spirit of the UN Award, given to outstanding individuals who have demonstrated the vision and spirit of the United Nations as expressed through the UN Charter, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Rev. Victor Kazanjian leads United Religions lnitiative’s global grassroots interfaith peacebuilding network of over 1,000 groups working in more than 100 countries and at the United Nations to build bridges of cooperation between people of all beliefs and cultures. Prior to joining URI, Victor served as Dean of lntercultural Education & Religious and Spiritual Life and Co-Director of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at Wellesley College, and as visiting faculty at the Malaviya Center for Peace Research at Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, India, where he served as Fulbright Professor of Peace and Justice Studies. Co-Founder of Education as Transformation Inc., an international organization that works on religious diversity and spirituality in higher education, Victor is also an author, educator, recognized thought-leader and trainer in areas of intergroup dialogue, multicultural and interreligious understanding, conflict transformation, diversity and democracy, social justice, community organizing, and peacebuilding. He is an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church and holds degrees from the Episcopal Divinity School and Harvard University.
Adeola Fearon is a practitioner of Yoruba Traditonal Spirituality; an intuitive healer, artist, coach and author with a passion for empowering individuals and all humanity. Her journey has allowed her to serve as an advocate for interfaith dialogues, human services, and in various aspects of community development. She is the founder of the Charlotte Red Bench Cooperation Circle whose purpose is to grow individual and communal capacities for love, forgiveness and compassion. Adeola Fearon is a URI North America Ex Officio Trustee.
Dr. Kurt Johnson has worked in professional science and comparative religion over 40 years, and is ordained or certified in five religious traditions. He is author of the influential book The Coming Interspiritual Age (2013) and two award-winning books in science: Nabokov’s Blues (2000) and Fine Lines (2015) (Brian Boyd Prize for scholarly writing, 2019). Kurt is the founder of The Interspiritual Dialogue Network, has served on the faculty of New York’s One Spirit Interfaith Seminary for 12 years and, for 25 years was associated there with the American Museum of Natural History. He is host for the Convergence radio series on VoiceAmerica, a series featuring global change-makers, and an editor of three magazines: The Convergence, Light on Light, and Conscious Business. Kurt has a PhD in Evolution and Ecology, is author of over 200 scientific articles and seven books, and a member or founder of The Evolutionary Leaders, The Association of Transformational Leaders, the International Contemplative Alliance, the Gaiafield and Subtle Activism Networks, the UN NGO Committee on Spirituality, Values and Global Concerns, the NGO Forum 21 Institute, the UN Committee for International Yoga Day, and is President of the Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. (www.isdna.org, www.lightonlight.us, www.unity.earth)
Layli Miller-Muro is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Tahirih Justice Center, which provides free legal services and engages in advocacy on behalf of immigrant women and girls fleeing human rights abuses. In its 22nd year, and in 5 cities across the United States, Tahirih has protected over 27,000 women and girls who courageously refuse to be victims of violence. As a law student, Layli assisted in the high-profile case of Fauziya Kassindja, a 17-year-old girl who had fled Togo in fear of a forced polygamous marriage and a tribal practice known as female genital mutilation, that set national precedent and revolutionized asylum law in the U.S. The decision to grant her asylum opened the doors to gender-based persecution as grounds for asylum. Using her portion of the proceeds from the book she and Fauziya co-authored about the case (Do They Hear You When You Cry? Delacorte Press, 1998), Layli established Tahirih. Prior to this, Layli was an attorney at the law firm of Arnold & Porter where she practiced international litigation and an attorney-advisor at the U.S. Department of Justice, Board of Immigration Appeals. She has been named Newsweek/Daily Beast’s 150 Most Fearless Women in the World, Goldman Sachs Top 100 Most Innovative Entrepreneurs, and won the Washington Post Award for Management Excellence.
Mohammed Al Samawi is an interfaith activist, a refugee from Yemen and author of The Fox Hunt: A Refugee’s Memoir of Coming to America (a 2019 Nautilus Book Award winner), a moving, unforgettable story of love, war, friendship, faith, and hope in which he recounts his harrowing personal transformation from a traditionalist to an interfaith activist, and how he escaped the brutal civil war in Yemen with the help of a daring plan engineered on social media by a small group of interfaith Facebook friends in the West. A movie of his memoir is currently in production. In 2019, he launched the Abrahamic House, a multi-faith incubator for social change with a mission to build sustainable interfaith learning and action across Muslim, Jewish, Baha’i and Christian communities in order to foster an environment of respect, justice, and social change.
Swami Tyagananda is a monk of the Ramakrishna Order and head of its branch in Boston since 2002. He joined the Order in 1976 after graduating from the University of Mumbai in India. Besides Mumbai (1976–80), he served in the monasteries at Belur Math (1980–82), New Delhi (1982–83) and Chennai (1983–1997) and was assigned to the Ramakrishna Vedanta Society in Boston in 1998. He is the Hindu chaplain at Harvard and MIT since 1999. Tyagananda was editor of the English journal Vedanta Kesari for 11 years (1986–97) and has written, translated and edited twelve books—including his latest Knowing the Knower: A Manual of Jnana Yoga. He has presented papers at academic conferences and he gives lectures and classes at the Vedanta Society as well as at MIT, Harvard and, on invitation, other colleges and religious groups in North America.
David Ragland is Co-Founder and Co-director for the Truth Telling project of Ferguson and is a Visiting Professor at Pacifica Graduate Institute. In the early days of the Ferguson Uprising, David helped to found the Truth Telling Project so that marginalized voices could be heard and part of moving society toward recognition of this experience to lay the groundwork for healing, reconciliation and social transformation. David’s work is drawn from the radical teaching and scholarship of MLK, particularly in his description of the Triple evils of Militarism, Racism and Materialism, as an ever-present part of American life. David studied critical race issues, peace education, philosophy and philosophy of education at University of Toledo, Teachers College Columbia University, The New School for Social Research, and Washington University of St. Louis. He writes frequently for PeaceVoice. and is currently working on a volume entitled “The Intellectual and Political History of Peacemakers of Color”. He is on the board of the directors for the Peace and Justice Studies Association and he is a member of the National Council for the Fellowship of Reconciliation.
Melinda Salazar is a peace and sustainability educator and consultant, an artist and co-founder of Teaching Peace Conferences and the Seacoast Peace Academy. A former Social Studies teacher at the Oyster River High School, the UNH Women’s Studies Program, and Western New Mexico University Master’s in Teaching Program, she lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Dorothy J. Maver, Ph.D. is an educator and peacebuilder whose keynote is inspiring cooperation on behalf of the common good. Dot was founding President and is a Board member and Trustee of the National Peace Academy USA, is a co-founding board member of the Global Alliance for Ministries and Infrastructures of Peace, and was the founding executive director of the River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding. Her work in education, politics and grassroots community organizing is focused on applied peacebuilding utilizing a shared responsibility and shared leadership model. She is co-author of the book Conscious Education: The Bridge to Freedom; is a Fellow with the World Business Academy, and serves on the boards of Lifebridge Foundation, River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding and Garden of Light. Dot also serves on the United Nations International Day of Peace NGO Education Peace Team, the International Cities of Peace Advisory Council. She also co-facilitates monthly webinars focusing on the UN Sustainable Development Goals and is a co-founder of the Global Silent Minute.
Philip M. Hellmich is Director of Peace at The Shift Network, director of The Summer of Peace and lead designer of the World Peace Library. In 2012, Philip presented on the Summer of Peace at the first United Nations High Level Forum on the Culture of Peace opened by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. In 2013, the United Nations published an article about the Summer of Peace in its UNITY magazine in China. Philip has dedicated most of his life to global and local peacebuilding initiatives, including 14 years with Search for Common Ground. He also served for four years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sierra Leone where he lived and worked in small remote bush villages and led to the publication of his book, God and Conflict: A Search for Peace in a Time of Crisis with a Foreword by Lama Surya Das. A longtime meditation practitioner, Philip enjoys studying and teaching about the parallels between inner and outer peace.
Ben Bowler is the Executive Director of UNITY EARTH, a global network building a worldwide movement for unity and peace. In 2006 he and his wife Jildou moved to Thailand to volunteer along the Thai-Burma border. In 2008 they founded Blood Foundation together, a NGO focusing on education projects. In 2008 Ben founded Monk for a Month in Chiang Mai offering men and women the opportunity to experience Thai temple life and temporary ordination. In 2010, Ben launched Muslim for a Month in Turkey offering guests a first-hand experience of Turkish Islam and Sufism, underneath the spiritually inclusive banner of Rumi. A year later, he launched World Weavers, offering spiritual immersion programs in Tibetan India, Nepal, Cambodia and Ethiopia. In October 2015, at the Parliament of World’ Religions, Ben launched 1GOD.com, an online platform aimed at countering religious fundamentalism, relativism and western materialism. Since then he has worked to build UNITY EARTH into a global platform that can support and empower the many grassroots movements working towards unity and peace in the world.
Dr. Peter Blaze Corcoran is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Studies and Environmental Education at Florida Gulf Coast University. He has been a Faculty Member at College of the Atlantic, Swarthmore College, and Bates College in the United States and has held appointments as a Visiting Professor at universities in Australia, the Netherlands, Fiji, Malaysia, and Kenya. New posts since his recent retirement include appointments as Research Fellow at the Earth Charter Center for Education for Sustainable Development at University for Peace in San Jose, Costa Rica; Senior Fellow at Forum 21 Institute in New York City; and Senior Advisor at Unity Earth Center in Melbourne, Australia. His recent books include Envisioning Futures for Environmental and Sustainability Education, Wageningen Academic Publishers (2017), and Intergenerational Learning and Transformative Leadership for Sustainable Futures, Wageningen Academic Publishers (2014).
William H. Smith, founding executive director of the National Center for Race Amity, and a pioneer who integrated division one football in the old South, left Wake Forest College to work as a community organizer in the Civil Rights Movement, was drafted into the US Army, served as a medic in Vietnam, where he was awarded two Bronze Stars and the Combat Medic Badge, and graduated with honors from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He also earned his doctorate in education from UMass. Having addressed issues of race and diversity in his work with civic, philanthropic and religious organizations his entire career, he is an award-winning documentary filmmaker for such compelling films as “The Invisible Soldiers: Unheard Voices,” and “An American Story: Race Amity and the Other Tradition,” which explores the rich history of cross cultural friendships in the struggle for social justice. He has received awards from numerous organizations including the International Academy of Communications Arts and Sciences, the NAACP, Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, the Screen Actors Guild, and the National Education Association. The National Center for Race Amity has coordinated efforts to establish National Race Amity Day, oversees the annual Metro Boston Race Amity Celebration, and hosts the annual National Race Amity Conference and Race Amity Medal of Honor Awards.
Philip Goldberg is an Interfaith Minister, public speaker, and author whose numerous books include the award-winning American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation, How Indian Spirituality Changed the West; The Life of Yogananda: The Story of the Yogi Who Became the First Modern Guru, and the forthcoming Spiritual Practice for Crazy Times: Powerful Tools to Cultivate Clarity, Calm and Courage. He blogs on Elephant Journal and Spirituality & Health, cohosts the popular Spirit Matters podcast, and leads American Veda Tours to India. His website is www.PhilipGoldberg.com.
Joel Grossman is an Interfaith Chaplain, ordained by the Chaplaincy Institute, Berkeley, CA, in 2000. He has worked has a hospice chaplain for sixteen years, presently as Director of Spiritual Services with Constellation Hospice, Newburyport, MA. Joel is a graduate of “Lev Shomea” (a listening heart), the first Jewish Spirit Direction training program. He led Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah) programs at his synagogue for over ten years, and now leads Jewish meditation sessions there. Joel has had a private practice as a spiritually based psychotherapist for over thirty years. He is a founding faculty member of the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine, an interfaith seminary.
Performers
Kristin Hoffmann, a Julliard trained singer-songwriter-musician with extraordinary artistic range, has been heard on major record labels, film and television, and has performed throughout the world, collaborating with musical luminaries on projects ranging from individual albums to grand symphonic productions. A strong advocate for peace and ocean conservation, Kristin has appeared internationally at environmental concerts and conventions, TEDx San Francisco, The Emoto Peace Project in Tokyo, and with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. The symphonic version of her “Song for the Ocean” was performed at Sydney Opera House by a choir of 800 Australian children. In 2011 she became the singer for Bella Gaia, a multimedia theater experience created in conjunction with NASA. Kristin addresses worldly issues through her songs reflecting her personal luminosity, her warmth, and her talent for bringing out music’s healing power. “My goal is to spread love, light, peace and truth into the world through the vehicles of music and energetic frequency.” – Kristin http://www.kristinhoffmann.com
Pihcintu Multicultural Chorus, welcoming immigrant children from around the globe, helps restart young lives from war-torn villages and refugee camps who have come to Portland, Maine, an ever-expanding international resettlement community and fertile ground to bring together children from diverse backgrounds to sing as one. Con Fullam, award-winning producer, musician, and songwriter, created The Chorus with the help of countless supporting souls from all walks of life.