Anne Benvenuti, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology and philosophy, an integrative scholar, a licensed clinical psychologist, a priest of the Episcopal Church, a spiritual director, and a published poet, writer, and photographer. She is a trustee on the Council of the Parliament of the World’s Religions and co-chair of its Women’s Task Force. She also serves on the U.N. NGO Committee on Mental health. Widely published, her research interests include neuroscientific models of natural spirituality and religious epistemology; implications of religious epistemology and natural spirituality for social policy and human-animal relations; and clinical integration of spirituality and health. She is a visiting scholar at Zygon Center for Religion and Science and at the Georgetown University Center for Clinical Bioethics.
Beverly M. Beltramo
Beverly M. Beltramo is a liturgical musician who lives in suburban Detroit. She is director of Spiritual Support, Oakwood Health System, in Dearborn, Michigan. She has graduate degrees in pastoral ministry and creative studies and a D.Min. from Ecumenical Theological Seminary, where her dissertation was “The Chaplain’s Role in Addressing Patient Satisfaction.”
Bev has 15 years experience as a health care chaplain, working with patients and families across the life spectrum. She currently leads a richly diverse department with Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, and Christian chaplains serving four Western Wayne County hospitals, including three trauma centers and a senior living community. The department is working towards accreditation as a Clinical Pastoral Education center and currently is supported by 100+ active Spiritual Support Volunteers.
Daniel Bellerose
Daniel Bellerose is a writer, researcher, and organizer who has been working in interfaith community building for the past four years. In 2014 he began working on founding the Global Symmetry Project, an organization which focuses on researching and promoting interfaith principles in international development work. His passion for working towards sustainable interfaith communities has led him to work with over a dozen different nonprofit organizations, from Tanzania to the Balkans, and in his local community of Harrisonburg, Virginia. In 2017 he won the Caretaker of God's Creation award at Houghton College, which recognized his commitment to sustainability in the local community, and climate advocacy abroad.
Lidiia Batig
Lidiia Batig is an alumna of the Russell Berrie Fellowship in Interreligious Studies and currently works as a Media Intern for the John Paul II Center for Interreligious Dialogue, responsible for the Center’s social media and communications. Lidiia is also a student of the Cardinal Bea Centre for Judaic Studies (Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, Italy).
She holds an MA in Religious Journalism from the Ukrainian Catholic University and an MA in Journalism from the Ivan Franko Lviv National University. Partly due to her own religion, family history and the current situation in Ukraine made religious journalism her calling.
Lidiia won a Russell Berrie Alumni Grant both in 2016-17 and 2017-18 for her project, “The School of Interreligious Dialogue.”
Kehkashan Basu
Kehkashan Basu has been impacting the global fraternity with her work on children’s rights, promoting gender quality, mitigating climate change and social upliftment. Born on 5th June, which is also World Environment Day, she feels that it was pre-ordained that she should grow up to be an eco-warrior. Spreading the message of peace, happiness and sustainability has been her passion since she was only 8 years old and she has worked tirelessly to enlist the support of children and youth across geographical boundaries. In 2013, at the age of 12, she was elected for a 2 year term as UNEP’s (United Nations Environment Programme) Global Coordinator for Children & Youth and a member of its Major Groups Facilitating Committee and she is the youngest person and the first minor, ever, to be elected into this position in the history of UNEP. She is also a United Nations Human Rights Champion for her work on protecting children’s rights.
Her internationally acclaimed work on sustainability has resulted in her appointment as the Honorary Advisor for the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development – New York, a member of KidsRights Youngsters, Global Advisory Council member of Young Men 4 Gender Equality -USA, members of World Oceans Day Global Youth Advisory Council and EarthEcho International Youth Leadership Council. She is also the youngest member of Canada’s Women in Renewable Energy forum.
Kehkashan is the founder of a youth organization, GREEN HOPE FOUNDATION, which seeks to provide a networking platform to children and youth, especially girls, to carry forward the Rio legacy through several environmental workshops and ground level projects on promoting gender equality, climate justice, stopping land degradation, biodiversity conservation, waste segregation and reversing land degradation. It now has over 1000 members across Middle East, India, Brazil, USA, Canada, Europe and SE Asia.
Dr. Ed Bastian
Training courses on InterSpiritual Meditation are taught by Dr. Ed Bastian, who holds a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies and is the founder and president of Spiritual Paths Foundation. He developed InterSpiritual Meditation process after forty years of research, study, and teaching, especially during the past decade, with over fifty esteemed teachers from Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, and Native American traditions. He is the award winning co-author of Living Fully Dying Well, author of InterSpiritual Meditation, author of Creating Your Spiritual Paths, publisher of Meditations for InterSpiritual Wisdom, and producer of documentaries on religion for the BBC and PBS. He is the former co-director of the Forum on BioDiversity for the Smithsonian and National Academy of Sciences, teacher of Buddhism and world religions at the Smithsonian, an internet entrepreneur, and translator of Buddhism scriptures from Tibetan into English.
Rabbi Sarah Bassin
Rabbi Sarah Bassin, Associate Rabbi of Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, is a pluralist at her core, believing that we always have something to learn from those who are different than us – whether religiously, culturally, politically, or even Jewishly. With this passion to engage difference, Rabbi Bassin has reinvigorated Emanuel’s young professionals community and work in social justice.
Prior to joining Temple Emanuel, Rabbi Bassin served as the inaugural executive director at NewGround: A Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change. Under her leadership, NewGround was named one of the 50 most innovative and inspiring organizations in the Jewish community by Slingshot magazine, and its interfaith teen program was recognized by Governor Jerry Brown as California’s faith-based organization of the year in 2013. She is an alumna of the prestigious Joshua Venture Fellowship for Jewish entrepreneurs. Rabbi Bassin graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude with a BA in Religion and History from Lafayette College. In addition to rabbinic ordination, she received a certificate in Jewish non-profit management at Hebrew Union College.
Lizann Bassham
Lizann Bassham was a minister in the United Church of Christ and a witch in The Reclaiming Tradition. She was a columnist for SageWoman magazine, and a novelist whose work includes One of Another (2008), about a group of folk in the Castro district of San Francisco dealing with the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. As a playwright she explored issues of sexuality, spirituality, social justice, and social location. She crafted her music, novels, plays, and columns as a means to explore community and connection. She was also one of the campus pastors at Pacific School of Religion. Lizann died on May 27, 2018. TIO is grateful for what she contributed to our journal and to the interfaith movement more broadly.
Diana Butler Bass
Diana Butler Bass is an author, speaker, and independent scholar specializing in American religion and culture.
She holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Duke University and is the award-winning author of ten books, including Grounded: Finding God in the World —A Spiritual Revolution (HarperOne, 2015), Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening (HarperOne, 2012) and Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith (HarperOne, 2006). Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks will be released by HarperOne on April 3, 2018.
She regularly speaks at conferences, consults with religious organizations, leads educational events, and teaches and preaches in a variety of venues in the United States and internationally. Her bylines include The Washington Post, The New York Times Syndicate, and The Huffington Post. She has commented widely on religion, politics, and culture widely in the media including USA TODAY, Time, Newsweek, CBS, CNN, FOX, PBS, NPR, Sirius XM, and CBC.
William Barylo
William Barylo (PhD., EHESS) is a London-based researcher in Sociology. He is passionate about how young Muslims in Europe and North America use their cultural heritage and religious ethics to improve society through arts, the environment, social and economic justice and mental health. He looks at society from a decolonial and restorative perspective. He is an awarded photographer and film-maker having directed the documentary ‘Polish Muslims: an unexpected meeting‘. In addition, he is also a blogger for the Huffington Post UK and the author of ‘Young Muslim Change-Makers‘.
As a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Warwick, his current project ‘The Diaspora Strikes Back‘ explores modes of contestation to hegemonies and imperialims amongst Sikh and Muslim millenials in Europe through arts, activism, charity, social enterprises and more.
Samira Fatma Barucija
Samira Fatma Baručija is from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She is an activist, trying to facilitate dialog, interfaith work, and reinforce the importance of living together for the sake of peace and security. Most of her work nowadays is focused on peacebuilding and creating cultures of peace. For the most of her nine-year-long experience in civil society, Samira has been an educator trying to use the platform of non-formal education to raise awareness, motivate and empower individuals and groups, reinforcing their role in the change they want to see.
The work that Samira is doing locally is done through a youth-led, youth founded organization called Youth for Peace. She is a project coordinator and an educator working on several initiatives with Youth for Peace. She is also a part of the UNDP’s Global Youth Programme as one of 16 young people from around the world, working toward fulfilling the UN’s 2030 agenda. Samira took a role of a speaker on a panel on “Promoting dialogue and reducing insecurity” during the conference in preparation for HLPF 2019: “Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies: SDG 16 implementation and the path towards leaving no one behind.”
Since 2014, Samira has been a Youth Leader for the United Religions Initiative. During the Accelerate Peace conference at Stanford University, Samira spoke on ending religiously motivated violence, stressing the importance of leaving no one behind and changing the position of the marginalized groups. She is currently holding the position of the Regional Coordinator for United Religions Initiative’s Multiregion, working on creating and promoting interfaith cooperation and building cultures of peace, justice, & healing.
Whittney Barth
Whittney Barth, assistant director of the Pluralism Project, began her work there as a research associate for our Religious Diversity News in 2010 and continues to work on projects related to the interfaith infrastructure of the United States. In addition to studying religious pluralism academically, she has worked with several interfaith organizations including the Interfaith Youth Core, the Chautauqua Institution, and the Harvard Interfaith Collaborative. As assistant director, Whittney manages student research, manages the summer research programs, provides administrative and financial oversight, and participates in a number of local and national initiatives, conferences, and events on behalf of the Project. Whittney received her BA in comparative religion and American studies with a minor in political science from Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) in 2008. She earned a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School (2011) where she completed a thesis project exploring the possibilities of integrating interfaith engagement and ecological awareness in response to the growing sense of "placelessness" in modern life.
Ramzy Baroud
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a US-Palestinian journalist, media consultant, an author, internationally-syndicated columnist, Editor of Palestine Chronicle (1999-present), former Managing Editor of London-based Middle East Eye (2014-15), former Editor-in-Chief of The Brunei Times, former Deputy Managing Editor of Al Jazeera online. He taught mass communication at Australia’s Curtin University of Technology, Malaysia Campus. Baroud also served as head of Aljazeera.net English’s Research and Studies department. He is the author of four books and a contributor to many others; his latest volume is The Last Earth, a Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London, 2018). His books are translated to several languages including French, Turkish, Arabic, Korean, Malayalam, among others. Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter (2015) and was a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara (2016-17).
Michael Barnett
Michael Barnett is a professor at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. Barnett previously taught at the Universities of Minnesota and Wisconsin, Macalester College, Wellesley College, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Barnett was a visiting scholar at the New School for Social Research and the Dayan Center at Tel-Aviv University. He has also been a visiting professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. He is currently spending a year at the Transantlatic Academy to work on a project on religion and the liberal international order. Barnett has written extensively on international relations theory, global governance, humanitarian action, and the Middle East. He is the author of numerous books, including The Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (2011). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.
Dr. Vern Barnet
Vern Barnet, D.Min., became minister emeritus of CRES (Center for Religious Experience and Study), a Kansas City community resource for exploring spirituality in all faiths, in 2004. He founded CRES in 1982 and became its minister-in-residence in 1985 with “community networking” responsibilities. He now focuses on writing, teaching, and consulting.
Rev. Barnet is known to many Kansas Citians through the religion column published Wednesdays in The Kansas City Star. Founder of The Kansas City Interfaith Council and its convener through 2003, he continues now as convener emeritus. He has been active in many professional and civic organizations. His articles, poems, and reviews appear in many journals.
Barnet has taught religion courses in numerous colleges and seminaries. In 2007 he served on the international faculty of the pilot “Interfaith Academies” partnered by Harvard University’s Pluralism Project, Religions for Peace-USA, the Saint Paul School of Theology, and the Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council. For six years he served on the editorial board of Unity Magazine as its only non-Unity ministerial member.
Abigail Barash
Abigail Barash is a graduate student at Claremont Lincoln University pursuing a Masters degree in Interreligious Studies. Originally from St. Louis, Abbie moved to Southern California in 2007, where she attended the University of Redlands and received her BA in Religious Studies. After college, she participated in the Glass Leadership Institute through the Anti Defamation League of St. Louis. Besides a fellowship with NewGround, Abbie was also a student worker this past October for the Center for Global Peacebuilding conference on Muslim Perspectives on Peacebuilding in Claremont.
Adelle Banks
Adelle M. Banks joined the Religion News Service staff in 1995 after working for more than 10 years at daily newspapers in the upstate New York communities of Binghamton and Syracuse, The Providence Journal, and the Orlando Sentinel. Before coming to RNS, she was a full-time religion reporter for six years in Orlando, covered the beat during part of her time in Syracuse and contributed to religion coverage at the other papers. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., Banks was a third-place winner in the Religion Newswriters Association's Religion Reporter of the Year contest in 2011 and 1998. She also has been honored by Associated Church Press.
Rev. Susan Baller-Shepard
Rev. Susan Baller-Shepard’s award-winning writing and poetry has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post “On Faith,” Spirituality & Health, Writer’s Digest, and other publications. Susan blogs for the Huffington Post Religion section and for Patheos, and was part of the undergraduate Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa. Having worked on international development projects in Haiti, China, Brazil, and England, Susan is a keynote speaker at national and international conferences. She’s co-founder and editor of www.spiritualbookclub.com with its blog of over 190 interviews. Presently she’s completing a non-fiction manuscript and teaching “Major World Religions.”
Kiran Bali
Kiran Bali MBE JP is chairperson of the Global Council of United Religions Initiative. A native of Nepal currently living in the U.K., she has founded and chaired several interfaith groups whilst working with a number of international organizations to enhance understanding among cultures to address community challenges and transform conflicts. For her achievements, she was honored by Queen Elizabeth II and has been the recipient of a number of international awards. She is a regular keynote speaker at events in a number of different countries and has also addressed the U.N. General Assembly.
Murali Balaji
Murali Balaji, Ph.D., is a journalist, author, and academic with nearly 20 years of experience in diversity leadership. He is the founder of Maruthi Education Consulting and consults Annenberg on diversity and inclusion issues. Balaji has also served as the education director for the Hindu American Foundation, where he was recognized as a national leader in cultural competency and religious literacy. He co-founded The Voice of Philadelphia, a non-profit geared to help high school dropouts (or pushouts) develop media literacy and citizen journalism skills.
He has also been a professor at Temple University and Lincoln University, where he chaired the mass communication department and engaged in multi-method research. His areas of research focus include political economy, critical race theory, and the connections between masculinity and nationalism.
He worked as a journalist for nearly a decade, covering politics, sports, and demographic changes. He won an Independent Press Association of New York award for covering racial justice issues and was honored by the St. Paul City Council for his work on covering policy issues. He is the author of The Professor and the Pupil (2007), a political biography of WEB Du Bois and Paul Robeson, the editor of Digital Hinduism (2017) and co-editor of Desi Rap (2008), one of the seminal volumes on South Asian Americans and hip-hop. He is a certified anti-bias trainer through the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), serves on the national advisory board of the Religious Freedom Center of the Newseum Institute, and has been featured for his work in publications such as Teaching Tolerance and Religion Dispatches.