Stephen Shashoua, born in Canada and of Iraqi Jewish descent, has lived in London for the past seven years. With a professional background in education, he joined the Three Faiths Forum in 2004 and has been its Director since 2008.
Under Stephen’s leadership, the organization has become one of England’s largest interfaith organizations. He initiated the Forum’s award-winning programs targeting schools, university students and young professionals.
Through his work on the ground, his writing and lectures, Stephen continues to promote cross-cultural and interfaith dialogue.
Stephen is a Freeman of the City of London, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Co-Founder of Iraq in Common. The Jewish News recently named him one of the 40 individuals under the age of 40 who are making an impact on the UK Jewish Community.
Sofia Sayabalian
Sofia Sayabalian (she/her) is a graduate student at the University of Washington working toward a Master of Communication in Communication Leadership (MCCL) degree. She received her B.A. in Communication and Media with a minor in Psychology from Seattle University.
Sofia’s current portfolio of work is focused on exploring storytelling techniques to enhance diverse narratives. Just how language brings people together, our visceral reactions are ever more important today–accentuating our need as humans to experience emotional and social experiences.
Sofia additionally has a passion for the intersection between professional communication, leadership processes and the ways in which individuals can leverage the various fountains of opportunity found in the digital media field. Sofia's website can be found on sofiasayabalian.com. In her free time, Sofia enjoys dancing.
Kathe Schaaf
Kathe Schaaf is a founding member of Women of Spirit and Faith, organized in 2010 with the intention of exploring, nurturing and celebrating women’s spiritual leadership. She is also one of the co-founders of Gather the Women and has anchored numerous ‘collaborative conversations’ connecting women and women’s organizations internationally since 2003. She is one of the editors of Women, Spirituality and Transformative Leadership: Where Grace Meets Power, an anthology of women’s wisdom published by SkyLight Paths in November 2011, and serves on the Board of Trustees of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions.
David Sassoon
David Sassoon is the founder and publisher of InsideClimate News, the non-partisan and non-profit news organization that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2013. He has been a writer, editor and publisher for 25 years, involved with public interest issues: human rights, cultural preservation, healthcare, education and the environment. In 2003 he began researching the business case for climate action for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Business Week used that research to help it rank the Top Ten Companies of the Decade for emissions reductions and to produce a multi-part project that examined how leading U.S. corporations were responding to climate change.
As an outgrowth of his research, Sassoon founded a blog in 2007 which has grown and evolved into InsideClimate News. He earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author of Tiny Specks in a Hurry: The Story of a Journey to Mustang.
You can reach him by email at david.sassoon@insideclimatenews.org.
Ani Sarkissian
Ani Sarkissian is an associate professor of political science at Michigan State University (MSU) and an associate scholar with the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Project. A core faculty member of MSU’s Muslim Studies Program and Center for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, her research focuses on comparing and investigating the role of religion in politics in countries around the world. Her book The Varieties of Religious Repression: Why Governments Restrict Religion (2015) examines how and why authoritarian regimes use religious restrictions as an instrument of their rule. With Robert Dowd and Paul Kollman she is drafting a book manuscript investigating the political consequences of Roman Catholic charismatic renewal in Sub-Saharan Africa, based on their research in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. Sarkissian received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2006, where she received grants from the National Science Foundation and IREX to develop her dissertation on religion and democratization.
Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati
Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswatiji, Ph.D, was raised in an American family in Hollywood, California and graduated from Stanford University. She was completing her Ph.D. when she left America in 1996 to come and live permanently at Parmarth Niketan Ashram in Rishikesh, India. She has been living there for the last 22 years, engaged in spiritual practice and dedicated service.
She was officially initiated into the order of Sanyas (monastic renunciation) in the year 2000, by her Guru, His Holiness Swami Chidanand Saraswatiji.
Sadhviji is a renowned speaker who gives keynote addresses at large forums, on a wide variety of topics ranging from conscious business to science and spirituality to sustainable development to the keys of happiness and peace in life to all aspects of yoga. She has also been a speaker at the United Nations, Parliament of World Religions and many international conferences and summits. Her talks blend the knowledge and logic of the West with the insights, spirituality and wisdom of the East, and she is renowned as a spiritual bridge between the two cultures.
Nathan Samwini
Rev. Dr. Nathan Iddrisu Samwini is head of the Department of Religious Studies at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana. Following divinity studies and Methodist ordination, he did his doctoral work in Islamic studies at the University of Birmingham, England. For eleven years he was interfaith coordinator and director of programs for the Christian Council of Ghana and serves today on the Programme for Christian-Muslim Relations in Africa, based in Nairobi, Kenya. Professor Samwini’s research interests include Islamic Resurgence in Ghana, Christian-Muslim relations in Africa, Africa indigenous religions, and comparative religions. He has two books and many articles to his credit.
Stephanie Saldana
Stephanie Saldana is the author of the memoir The Bread of Angels: A Journey to Love and Faith (2011), about the year she spent in Damascus, Syria. She lives in Jerusalem, where she teachers at Bard/Al-Quds University.
Estrella Sainburg
Estrella Sainburg is Organizing Director at GreenFaith and local organizer in California. Estrella oversees training and development of GreenFaith Organizers, the GreenFaith Organizing Community, and GreenFaith Circles. Estrella initiated with GreenFaith as New Jersey Organizer and is now leading the organization’s faith- based, environmental efforts in her home county of Los Angeles. As a Christian and Mexican-American, Estrella hopes to contribute to the growing uprising of Latinos in the US ensuring the health and opportunities for our communities and the natural environment around us.
Sohaib Saeed
Sohaib Saeed is a Scottish Muslim writer, translator and occasional imam. Among his primary interests are Quranic studies (quranica.com) and interfaith dialogue. After attaining a Masters in Philosophy from Edinburgh University, he moved to Cairo with his wife to pursue a degree at the renowned Al-Azhar University. Sohaib has a strong background in youth, education and interfaith work, and has volunteered for a number of organizations and spoken on diverse platforms. He believes in sharing values based on an appreciation of our shared humanity.
Sana Saeed
Sana Saeed is coordinator of LEADD (Leadership Education Advancing Democracy & Diversity), the Interfaith Alliance’s national youth program promoting active citizenship in a multi-faith society to high-schoolers. Previously, she directed youth programs at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington (UUCA) for 200 high-school and middle-school youth. She simultaneously served as consulting program manager for the Interfaith Youth Action Group, an initiative training youth to become interfaith leaders through service. Her work was highlighted in a Wall Street Journal article she co-authored on Muslim students on East Coast college campuses. In 2008, she completed her M.S. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University.
Sana currently is co-authoring a national high-school curriculum introducing anti-racism and social justice to teens called Building a Beloved Community for the Unitarian Universalist Association. In June 2012 she was elected an at-large Board Member of the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington, DC. She has been featured on Voice of America radio stations and is a frequent presenter regarding young adult peacemakers.