Canon Dr. Andrew Smith is the Director of Interfaith Relations for the Anglican Bishop of Birmingham a post he has held since 2011. He has over 25 years’ experience of interfaith engagement and in 2000 pioneered a model of work with Christian and Muslim teenagers. In 2009 he founded The Feast, a youth project working with young people of different faiths which works in three areas of England and has inspired work in Lebanon, Sudan, Egypt, USA and Switzerland. He is chair of the Advisory Forum for KAICIID and a member of the Church of England ‘Presence and Engagement’ task group supporting Anglican churches in multi-faith parishes. He is a regular speaker and writer on inter-faith issues, his most recent publication being ‘Vibrant Christianity in Multi-faith Britain’ published by BRF in 2018. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham Edward Cadbury Centre and in 2018 was awarded the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Calvin Skaggs
Calvin Skaggs, founder and president of Lumiere Productions, has produced or directed over 30 dramas and documentaries for television and theatrical exhibition. His first theatrical feature, On Valentine’s Day, was the official American entry in the Venice Film Festival; his hip-hop drama Fly By Night won the Sundance Filmmakers’ Trophy in 1993. He has executive produced two major documentary series for PBS—With God On Our Side and Local News—and produced numerous films for Discovery, PBS, HBO and Channel 4 UK. Before founding Lumiere, Skaggs earned a Ph.D. from Duke University, and served as Professor of English and Cinema at Drew University.
Harish Singhal
Harish Singhal earned his master’s degree in English from Allahabad University in India. He was selected to work at the Indian Revenue Service, which he left to earn his law degree from the the University of California, Berkeley. Singhal was also invited to spend a year at Harvard and was published in the Harvard International Law Journal. He went on to work as a tax lawyer for Fortune 500 companies before leaving the law in 1999 to pursue writing full time. Asoka: A Love Story (2010) is his first novel. First published in India, Asoka earned high praise and was described as “a magical story of love” and “an epic [that] reclaims the grandeur of storytelling” in The Asian Age and The Hindu. Singhal is married with two daughters and resides in California.
Satpal Singh
Dr. Satpal Singh is a founding trustee of the Sikh Council for Interfaith Relations, and is the immediate past chairperson of the World Sikh Council - America Region. He is a member of the Executive Council of the Religions For Peace, USA, and is actively involved in Catholic-Sikh dialogue. He frequently speaks on Sikh philosophy and the Sikh way of life in various forums, and participates in interfaith dialogues on diversity, religion, and peace. He is one of the principal organizers of the annual Sikh Youth Symposium held across U.S. and Canada. He speaks and writes on human rights issues, particularly on the issue of violence against women. He has contributed to the Huffington Post, the Washington Post, the PBS Newshour, Sacred Journey and other media.
Dr. Singh is a professor in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the State University at New York in Buffalo, where he teaches and conducts research in neuroscience and pharmacology. He conducts an annual summer-long program at the University of Cambridge (UK), engaging U.S. students in biomedical research.
Ralph Singh
Ralph Singh is the chair of the Wisdom Thinker Network. Known for his efforts in building interfaith relations, he helped launch and served as vice-chair of the North American Interfaith Network, the Interfaith Education Committee, and is an honorary lifetime board member. He was the founding president of Gobind Sadan, USA, currently serves as director of Publications and Public Relations for Gobind Sadan, and heads Gobind Sadan Publications. where he also writes his original works while editing, and overseeing much of the translations of Babaji’s talks.
He has worked in education developing and teaching a course called “Exploring Spirituality” and helped design and name the “Schools of Character” project for the Central NY Education Consortium. His current curriculum, “Stories to Light Our Way," employs an award-winning audio CD and accompanying study guide for use in public, private, and parochial schools, religious educators, and parents, to honor diversity, nurture character, and deter bullying. He also helped pioneer educational programs for first-generation Sikh youth in America and championed the rights of Sikhs following the Indian government’s attack on the Akal Takhat in India in 1984.
As long as Babaji was on this earth, Ralph served as His translator in international gatherings and as his representative at major conferences, including the Millennium Peace Summit. He has lectured and written on the importance of values and spirituality in modern society, and has represented the teachings of the Sikh Gurus to national and international audiences from the Smithsonian Institution to local interfaith dialogues. He is a graduate of The Gunnery, received his degree in Japanese Area Studies from the University of Rochester, and maintains a lifelong study/practice of prayer and meditation and spiritual traditions.
Meji Singh
R.K. Janmeja Singh, known to his many friends as Meji, was born in 1931 to a Sikh family in India’s Punjab. He came to the United States in 1958 for graduate school and received his Ph.D. from Boston University. His passion as a clinical psychologist has been conflict resolution and community mental health, focused on a consultee-based approach. His pioneering work has taken him to dozens of countries as a professor, practitioner, and consultant, serving corporations and youth centers, prisons and medical schools. He taught psychology at the University of California Berkeley for 16 years and was dean of Rosebridge Graduate School of Integrative Psychology for 12. At San Francisco’s Letterman Army Medical Center he was a mental health consultant for 17 years. In 1993 he founded the Hume Behavioral Health and Training Center, a post-graduate training institute in what Meji called “consultee-based community health” in a 1964 publication.
Meji has been a revered faith leader in the Sikh community of the Bay Area. For decades he has taught Gurbani (Sikh sacred texts) to children and young adults, largely within the context of different gurdwaras, the sanctuaries where Sikhs gather to worship, study, and eat together. He was a founder and later the chair of the Sikh Center of San Francisco-Bay Area and of the Sikh Foundation of North America. Since childhood, Meji’s faith and practice has been interfaith affirming. As a local/global interfaith activist he has been engaged with United Religions Initiative, the Interfaith Center at the Presidio, and the Ik Onkar Peace Foundation, an interfaith organization he founded.
Kevin Singer
Kevin Singer is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of Neighborly Faith, an organization focused on helping evangelical Christians become good neighbors to people of other faiths. He holds degrees in media and theology from N. Illinois University (BA), Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (MA) and Wheaton College (MA). Kevin is currently completing a PhD in Higher Education at North Carolina State University, where he is a Research Associate for the IDEALS project, which explores how college students are engaging with religious diversity.
Kevin can be found on Twitter @kevinsinger0.
Kamran Shezad
Kamran Shezad is a qualified environmental specialist with practical field and managerial experience in sustainable development extending over 15 years. A strong advocate of empowering communities to guide behavioral change amongst their peers and using the power of digital media to spread the message of sustainability. He holds a master’s degree in environmental sustainability (Strategy & Management), is a chartered environmentalist, and a full member of the Institute for Environmental Management & Assessment (IEMA). Kamran is also the director of training at the Islamic Foundation for Environmental and Ecological Sciences (IFEES/EcoIslam).
Jacob Holsinger Sherman
Jacob Holsinger Sherman is assistant professor and core faculty in Philosophy and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CISS) (ciis.edu) and co-director of the Chaudhuri Center for Contemplative Practice, Interreligious Dialogue, and Social Justice at CIIS. He received his PhD in Philosophical Theology from the University of Cambridge and was previously a visiting lecturer in Philosophy of Religion at King's College London. Jacob is author of Partakers of the Divine: Contemplation and the Practice of Philosophy (2014) and the editor, with Jorge Ferrer, of The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, Religious Studies (2008), and his writings have appeared in journals such as Religious Studies, Modern Theology, and The Heythrop Journal.
Rita D. Sherma
Dr. Rita Sherma is Director of Hindu Studies and Associate Professor of Dharma Studies at the Graduate Theological Union. Previously, she served as the Swami Swami Vivekananda Visiting Faculty in Hindu Studies at the University of Southern California. Professor Sherma holds an MA in Religion and a PhD in Theology and Ethics. She has published five books, is an editor in chief of the International Journal of Dharma Studies, and the editor of the Hinduism Volume of the Encyclopedia of Indian Religions (2017). She is the co-founder and vice president of the Dharma Academy of North America (DANAM), an academic forum which explores, in multidisciplinary ways, the cultures, religious lives, philosophies, art, ritual, and contemporary applications of the religions born in India. She is currently completing a book that envisions a contemporary Hindu ecological theology of the divine feminine.
Ruth Broyde Sharone
A passionate interfaith leader, documentary filmmaker, journalist, and author, honored internationally for her contributions to cultural education, peace and justice, Ruth Broyde Sharone is co-chair of the Southern California Parliament of the World’s Religions (SCCPWR). She is an inspirational public speaker and travels frequently to college campuses to present interfaith programs and screen her award-winning documentary, “God and Allah Need to Talk.” Her recent interfaith memoir, Minefields & Miricles: Why God and Allah Need to Talk (2012), endorsed by more than 30 religious leaders including H.H.the Dalai Lama, won top awards in two literary competitions.
Invited twice to address U.N. roundtables in Geneva, Switzerland, Ruth has pioneered interfaith pilgrimages to Egypt, Israel and Turkey. In 1991 she co-founded Festival of Freedom with an African-American Minister. Participants of diverse religious, racial and ethnic backgrounds were invited to share their faith stories as they retraced the steps of the Exodus, from Egypt to the Sinai to Jerusalem. FESTIVAL OF FREEDOM was featured on CNN World News in 1994.
Ruth also worked on staff of the global Parliament of the World’s Religions, serving as a Partner Cities associate in the U.S., Latin America, Australia, and the Middle East. In 2013 she was inducted into the Martin Luther King Advisory Board at Morehouse College in Atlanta. Ruth is the creator of INTERFAITH: The Musical and has released an album with 11 of the songs carrying the tag line: "Broadway-bound on the wings of peace."
Tahil Sharma
Tahil Sharma is a Southern California native born to a Hindu and Sikh Indian family. He is a nationally recognized leader promoting religious and secular pluralism, human rights, social justice. Tahil serves as a Religious Director from the Office of Religious Life at the University of Southern California working on local initiatives to promote inter-religious dialogue and community engagement with students of diverse religious and secular backgrounds, with emphasis on South Asian and Hindu students, with support of the Germanacos Fellowship through the Interfaith Youth Core. He also serves as an Interfaith Liaison for Sadhana: The Coalition of Progressive Hindus and the Vice Chair for the Committee on Human Relations for the city of Claremont. He has worked as the Hope Not Hate Campaign and Culturama Coordinator for AMP Global Youth, a project of Americans for Informed Democracy, to create an intercultural, virtual exchange between students in the United States and the Middle East with the support of the Aspen Institute and the US State Department and has served as a Youth Representative to the United Nations DPI NGO for the Parliament of the World’s Religion. Tahil was also recently appointed as the youngest Board Member of the Southern California Committee for the Parliament of World's Religions.
Rabbi Rami Shapiro
Rabbi Rami Shapiro is an award winning author of over thirty books on Judaism, Recovery, spirituality, and Perennial Wisdom. He currently directs the One River Foundation (www.oneriver.org).
Sheetal Shah
Sheetal Shah, senior director of the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) based in New York City, holds a Masters degree from the London School of Economics and a Bachelors in Computer Science from Georgia Tech. She focuses on developing HAF's public policy strategy, communicating with and expanding HAF’s membership base, fundraising and finances, and building the HAF brand through various means including development of the Foundation’s website. She was instrumental in formulating the Foundation's Take Back Yoga campaign and manages the Hindu American Congressional Internship. A former member of the Foundation’s Executive Council, Ms. Shah is well-experienced in HAF’s human rights campaign and community outreach efforts. She is a blogger for Beliefnet and serves on the Board of the Broome Street Ganesha Temple.
Gerish Shah
Girish Shah emigrated from Bombay to northern California in 1963 to pursue graduate studies at the University of California (Berkeley). As an executive consultant with IBM Global Service and numerous other Silicon Valley ventures, he specialized in e-business solutions, retiring in 2004. In 1981 he helped found the Jain Center of Northern California and has been active there since, twice serving as its president. Today he serves as trustee on half a dozen different boards in the San Jose area. He was instrumental in planning the magnificent temple the Jains built in 2000 and a founding member of the Silicon Valley Interreligious Council. Within his community he is known as an interfaith activist, attending the 1999 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Melbourne.
Hozan Alan Senauke
Hozan Alan Senauke is vice-abbot of Berkeley Zen Center (BZC) in California. He lives at BZC with his wife, Laurie, and their two children. Since 1991 Alan has worked with the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. He is a socially engaged Buddhist activist, most recently founding the Clear View Project, developing Buddhist-based resources for relief and social change. In another realm, Alan has been a student and performer of American traditional music for more than forty years.
Samir Selmanovic
Samir Selmanovic, Ph.D, is a people-enjoying results-driven community and thought leader relentlessly pursuing “win-win-win” outcomes for corporations, their local communities, and non-profits. His ten years of community leadership as a progressive Christian pastor include recognition by the organization Muslims Against Terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11 in New York City; co-founding a vibrant young adult congregation in Southern California; and founding the non-profit Faith House Manhattan, an inter-religious “community of communities.”Noted lecturer on working with “the other,” interfaith work, and cross-sector collaboration. Samir’s book It’s Really All About God: How Islam, Atheism, and Judaism Made Me a Better Christian (2009) and his work in inter-religious interdependence was profiled in the New York Times. He maintains a vast network of leaders across sectors in New York City and nationally. Samir founded a non-profit, raised over $2 million for worthy causes, managed 2,000+ active volunteers, and developed 50+ leaders. If he had to do it all over again, Samir would talk less and cook more.
Robert P. Sellers
Robert P. Sellers, Ph.D., is Professor of Theology at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas. His graduate classes emphasize cross-cultural living, global Christianity, Two-Thirds World and liberation theologies, world religions, and interreligious dialogue. He’s taught and lectured in Canada and Mexico, Great Britain, Eastern and Western Europe, Kenya, South Africa, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Brazil. Working with Muslim and Baptist partners, he helps plan periodic national interfaith conferences. He is also active nationally as a member of the Interfaith Relations and Collaboration Table of the National Council of Churches and internationally through the Interfaith Relations Commission of the Baptist World Alliance. Rob was Chair of the Board for the Parliament of World Religions from January 2016-August 2018.
Wm. Andrew Schwartz
Wm. Andrew Schwartz is a PhD. student in Philosophy of Religion and Theology at Claremont Graduate University. He received a B.A. in Religion and a B.A. in Missions from Northwest Nazarene University, an M.A. in Theological Studies from Nazarene Theological Seminary, and an MA in Philosophy from Claremont Graduate University. Andrew’s academic interests include: Religious Pluralism; Truth and Contradictions; Comparative Philosophy, Religion, and Theology; Process Philosophy; and Wesleyan Theology. He is the Communications Director and editor of Process Perspectives for the Center for Process Studies (a faculty research center of Claremont Lincoln University in association with Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University).
Bruce Schuman
Bruce Schuman is an internet programmer and developer with an academic background in epistemology and cognitive science. In 1993, his “Bridge Across Consciousness” project brought scholars and believers together and began identifying the common ground in world spirituality and religion. In 1995, his “United Communities of Spirit” project extended that work to the web and includes the complete text of “World Scripture”. His Interspirit network system currently supports the Interfaith Center at the Presidio and has provided support for North American Interfaith Network, United Religions Initiative, and the Parliament of World Religions. His “Global Resonance” and “Shared Purpose” networks are exploring emerging concepts in collaboration and intercultural understanding.