Lynda Trono

Lynda Trono is a diaconal minister in the United Church of Canada. She became involved in interfaith work after her son Joel converted to Islam in 2007 and started to experience discrimination. She joined the Manitoba Multifaith Council and chaired their Education Committee for six years. During that time she found that building relationship with people of other faiths was just as important as learning about their faiths. Friendship is key. Lynda attended her first NAIN Connect in 2008. She currently serves as the NAIN Program Convenor. Lynda’s day-job involves working with people that live in poverty in Winnipeg’s inner city. She is passionate about working for social change.

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Lynda Trono tiene calidad de ministra de la Iglesia Unida de Canadá, pero sin haber sido ordenada para celebrar misa. Ella se integró al trabajo de inter-fe después que su hijo Joel se convirtió al Islamismo en 2007 y comenzó a experimentar discriminación. Ella se unió al Consejo de Multife de Manitoba y presidió el Comité de Educación por 6 años. Durante ese tiempo ella descubrió que desarrollar relaciones con gente de otra fe era tan importante como saber de su fe. Amistad es la clave. Lynda asistió a su primera conexión NAIN en 2008. Ella en la actualidad sirve como Organizadora de Programas NAIN. El trabajo diario de Lynda envuelve asistir a gente que vive en pobreza en la ciudad de Winnipeg. Ella es apasionada de trabajar por el cambio social.

David Parks-Ramage

Rev. David Parks-Ramage, Sensei is a United Church of Christ minister with 30 years experience teaching interfaith contemplative practices. He is a Zen teacher trained in koan practice at the Pacific Zen Institute and has been educated in Spiritual Direction at the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation. He is the pastor of the First UCC in Santa Rosa, California.

David's contemplative teachers over the years have included John Tarrant, Henri Nouwen, Gerald May, Tilden Edwards and Rosemary Dougherty.  With his deep training in Christian Contemplative practice and Zen he finds value and teaches in each tradition. Currently, he is working on the sayings and doings of Jesus as Christian koans.

Marcus Braybrooke

Rev. Dr. Marcus Braybrooke is a retired Anglican parish priest, living near Oxford, England. He has been involved in interfaith work for nearly fifty years. He joined the World Congress of Faiths in 1964 and is now president. He served as executive director of the Council of Christians and Jews from 1984 to 1988, is a co-founder of the Three Faiths Forum and patron of the International Interfaith Centre at Oxford. He has travelled widely to attend interfaith conferences and to lecture. Professor Braybrooke is author of over forty books on world religions, including Pilgrimage of Hope: One Hundred Years of Global Interfaith Dialogue (1992), the history of the interfaith movement’s first century. A number of his books address shared worship, prayer, and meditation. In September 2004 the Archbishop of Canterbury awarded him with the Lambeth Doctorate of Divinity “in recognition of his contribution to the development of interreligious cooperation and understanding throughout the world.”

Usaama al-Azami

Usaama al-Azami read his BA in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Oxford University, and his MA and PhD in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He came to Islamic studies after a gap year studying Arabic and Islamic studies convinced him to turn down an offer to study medicine at Imperial College London. During his undergraduate career, he also pursued Islamic studies in seminarial contexts alongside his academic studies, covering much of what would be studied in the advanced years of an Indian madrasa curriculum. He has travelled extensively throughout the Middle East, living for five years in the region. He is also an enthusiastic teacher who is very eager to support the formation of research scholars.

Born and raised in the U.K., he began seriously studying Islam in 2002. He has studied with Muslim scholars and theologians in seminary contexts in the Middle East and Europe. His teachers have included Shaykh Mohammad Akram Nadwi, Professor Yahya Michot, Professor Tariq Ramadan, and Shaykh Muhammad Yaqoubi. He was a founding member of the Oxford University Muslim-Jewish dialogue group, MuJewz, and is a regular participant in Princeton’s Muslim-Christian dialogue. He maintains an occasional blog on The Huffington Post focusing on topics relating to religion.