Rev. Canon Charles Gibbs has served as United Religion Initiative’s founding executive director for the past 16 years, from URI’s gestation to the present international network of more than 500 cooperation circles in 78 countries. Charles has worked with religious, spiritual and other leaders in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, been a featured speaker internationally, and written extensively about interfaith cooperation. With colleague Sally Mahé, he co-authored Birth of a Global Community (2003), a book on the birth of the United Religions Initiative. His essay “Opening the Dream: Beyond the Limits of Otherness” appears in the anthology, Deepening the American Dream. As an Episcopal priest, Charles brings to his work a strong commitment to spiritual transformation and to work for peace, justice and healing, as well as an abiding belief in the sacredness of all life on this planet.
Catherine Ghosh
Catherine Ghosh is an artist, writer, mother and editor of Journey of the Heart: An Anthology of Spiriutal Poetry by Women (2014). She has been an active practitioner and student in the Bhakti Yoga tradition since 1986, studying under Damodar Goswami of Jagannatha Puri, Orissa, India, and later trained in Svarupa-asanas with Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati in La Jolla, California. Catherine is co-founder of The Secret Yoga Institute, together with her life partner, Graham M. Schweig, PhD, and develops teaching materials for yoga workshops, such as meditation videos, which have been shown at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Catherine has served as a contributing editor for Integral Yoga Magazineand is a regular contributor to Mantra, Yoga + Health Magazine She is passionate about inspiring women to share their spiritual insights and honor their valuable voices, and does so through a Women’s Spiritual Poetry Blog she founded in 2012. A lover of nature, Catherine divides her time between her two homes in Northern Florida and Southern Virginia, delighting in the mothering of her two sons, painting, quilting, and writing poetry, among other artistic activities. You may connect with her on Facebook or email. her.
Ilona Gerbakher
Ilona Gerbakher is a scholar and author. After completing her degree as a Presidential Scholar of Islamic Theology at Harvard Divinity School, she moved to Qatar as a Georgetown Arabic Language fellow. She then moved to Morocco to complete her studies of advanced Classical and Moroccan Arabic. She is currently working in Jerusalem as a Comparative Religions fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she studies Hebrew, Aramaic, and literary Arabic. Ilona is committed to building bridges between disparate communities – Muslim and Jew, religious and secular – and believes that this will be the century of peaceful co-existence and empathic understanding among all peoples.
Jeff Gunung
Jeff Genung is a graduate of Cornell University (B.S. in Business Management). He is the co-founder and president of Contemplative Life, a non-profit organization that helps connect people with transformative practices and helps them build community with others of like mind. He has previously served as a senior executive for TechTurn, the nation’s leading computer recycling and refurbishing company. Jeff also served as a senior executive for Mutual Mobile, one of the nations’ largest and fastest-growing mobile application and design agencies. He has created strategic partnerships with some of the world’s largest companies.
Jeff has studied the contemplative practices of many great traditions as well as the development of contemporary secular practices. He is experienced in working with all age groups in engaging contemplative practices, including the development of a rite-of-passage program for young contemplatives transitioning to adulthood. He has also served many years as a hospice volunteer, integrating end-of-life practices and programs that address the contemplative needs associated with those experiencing grief and loss.
Lucy Gellman
Lucy Gellman is a reporter for the New Haven Independent and the station manager of
WNHH-LP Radio New Haven. From July 2013 through July 2015 she served as the Florence B. Selden Fellow at the Yale University Art Gallery.
Francis Geddes
Francis Geddes, D. Min., has studied and taught a variety of spiritual disciplines during the past forty years. He teaches healing in the context of contemplative prayer and interfaith spiritual exercises at retreat centers, conferences, congregations, and seminary classrooms. The title of his doctoral dissertation is Healing Training in the Church, completed at the San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo, California, in 1981. He is a retired minister in the United Church of Christ and a graduate of The Program in Spiritual Direction at the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation in Washington D.C.; Stanford University; and the Yale Divinity School. He is the author of Contemplative Healing: The Congregation as Healing Community (2011). Dr. Geddes believes there is a natural, God-given “healing force” abroad in the universe and latent within every person. He suggests that we are all healers, but most of us are not aware of that potential.
Vicki Garlock
Vicki Garlock is the founder of World Religions for Kids, a company dedicated to improving religious literacy in children and their adults. Her kids’ books, geared to kids aged 4-10, include the award-winning We All Have Sacred Spaces, Embracing Peace: Stories from the World’s Faith Traditions, and ABCs of the World’s Religions (due out January, 2023).
Over the years, she has also written extensively for both The Interfaith Observer and Multicultural Kid Blogs, and she regularly presents at conferences for Social Studies teachers across the southeastern U.S.
Vicki received her Sc.B. in Psychology from Brown University before attending the Univ. of AL – Birmingham for her Ph.D. with dual specialties in neuroscience and cognitive development. After serving over a decade as a full-time Psychology Professor at Warren Wilson College, she accepted a position as Nurture Coordinator and Curriculum Specialist at Jubilee! Community Church in Asheville, NC. While there, she developed a multifaith curriculum for kids aged 4 through 8th grade and was ordained as their Minister of Education.
Vicki and her husband live in Asheville, NC, and they have two almost-grown children. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok (@learnreligions).
Gary Gach
Gary Gach is a Jewish Buddhist, ordained in the Order of Interbeing, practicing mindfulness in the tradition of Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh. He is author of the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Buddhism (3rd edition, 2009), the editor of the American Book Award-winning What Book!? Buddha Poems from Beat to Hiphop (1997), and translator of three books by Ko Un, hailed by Lawrence Ferlinghetti as “Korea’s greatest living Zen poet.” Gary’s work has appeared in Buddha Dharma, Evergreen Review, European Judaism, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The New Yorker, Patheos, and Religion Dispatches. He hosts an online haiku forum for Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. He’s also Western advisor to the Buddhist Channel. Gary can be reached at his website.
Nancy Fuchs Kreimer
Rabbi Nancy Fuchs Kreimer, Ph.D., is on the faculty of Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and directs its Department of Multifaith Studies and Initiatives. For more than 30 years, she has explored what joins and separates religions in their practice and approach to holy texts. She creates workshops and retreats bringing emerging religious leaders together.
“I look on interreligious study as part of the spiritual formation of rabbinical students,” she says. "In addition, we want to prepare our students to be proactive leaders in a religiously diverse society.” Kreimer regularly hosts visiting Muslim scholars and initiates programs that offer joint text study of Torah and Qu’ran. She organizes service-learning projects where rabbinical students work in interfaith settings, then bring their experiences back to the classroom. She envisions a generation of Jewish leaders able to forge alliances with their Muslim and Christian counterparts in the community to create understanding and catalyze change.
Rabbi Kreimer’s blog is Multifaithworld.org, and she is regularly published in The Huffington Post.
Budd Friend-Jones
Gilbert (“Budd”) Friend-Jones was called to his current position as Senior Minister of the First Congregational Church (United Church of Christ) in Crystal Lake, Illinois in 2006. Prior to that, he served churches in Atlanta, Georgia; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Reston, Virginia; and South Paris, Maine. He has spoken and conducted workshops in Great Britain, Ghana, India, and the former Soviet Union.
Friend-Jones is the author of two books and numerous articles. He has been a founding member of civic and religious organizations including FaithBridge, in the Chicago northwestern suburbs, the Faith Alliance of Metro Atlanta, World Pilgrims, the Mayflower Theatre Project, and the New World Mime Theatre. He initiated a now-annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Interfaith Service and the two-year Faith to Faith, Face to Face interfaith certification program for lay people. He has led interfaith pilgrimages to Spain, Morocco, Gibraltar, and Turkey. As a consultant for Magical Steps Travel in Kuşadası, Turkey, he organizes and leads trips for specialized groups. He serves on the Board for the North American Interfaith Network.
A native of West Virginia, Friend-Jones earned his doctorate at Howard University Divinity School, his M. Div. at Princeton Theological Seminary and his B. S. at Frostburg State University. He and his wife Gretchen have two children and three granddaughters.
Victoria Furio
Victoria Furio is the assistant to Dr. James H. Cone at Union Theological Seminary and the convener of the Climate Justice Initiative there, a group working to address the urgent threat of climate change in our time. With over 30 years devoted to social justice, she has worked on the local, national, and international levels in education and advocacy within the religious community. She can be reached at: climate.justice2013@gmail.com.
Sister Mary Friedland
Sister Mary Friedland has practiced Raja Yoga meditation with the Brahma Kumaris since 1987. She enjoys experimenting with the principles and methods of Raja Yoga meditation to achieve higher levels of clarity and freedom in her life. Professionally, she has worked in the field of education as a classroom teacher, corporate trainer, textbook editor and yoga instructor.
She has a BA in Psychology from the University of Illinois and an MA in Special Education from Northeastern Illinois University. While living at the San Francisco Brahma Kumaris Center, she served on the staff of the Interfaith Center at the Presidio. She currently resides at the Brahma Kumaris Meditation Center in Chicago and teaches meditation and courses in practical spirituality throughout the United States.
Don Frew
Elder Don Frew is a Wiccan Elder and High Priest of Coven Trismegiston in Berkeley CA. He is a National Interfaith Representative for the Covenant of the Goddess. He has represented Wicca in interfaith work for over 30 years, including on the Board of the Berkeley Area Interfaith Council, at all of the modern Parliaments of the World's Religions, and on the Board of the Interfaith Center at the Presidio. He founded and serves as Director for the Lost and Endangered Religions Project and is Vice-President of The Interfaith Observer online journal. He has been active in the URI since 1998 and currently coordinates the Spirituality and the Earth CC (Multiregional). He served as a North American Trustee on the URI's first elected Global Council, as an At-Large Trustee on the second & third Global Councils, as a Continuing Trustee on the fourth Global Council, and serves again as an At-Large Trustee on the current Global Council.
Frank Fredericks
After graduating from NYU, Frank Fredericks worked in the music industry, managing artists such as Lady Gaga, and founding Çöñàr Records. In 2006, he founded World Faith. After developing the World Faith model, he traveled to Lebanon, India, Egypt, and Sudan finding passionate young people to start Chapters. World Faith is now active in nine countries. Frank resides in New York, working as a PR and Online Marketing Consultant and performing as a professional musician. As an active blogger, Frank contributes to various blogs including the Huffington Post, Washington Post, and Sojourners. Frank has been interviewed on Good Morning America, NPR, New York Magazine, and various international media outlets.
Matthew Fox
Matthew Fox, born 1940, is an American priest and theologian. Formerly a member of the Dominican Order within the Roman Catholic Church, he is now a member of the Episcopal Church. Fox was an early and influential exponent of a movement that came to be known as Creation Spirituality. The movement draws inspiration from the mystical philosophies of such medieval Catholic visionaries as Hildegard of Bingen, Thomas Aquinas, Saint Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Dante Alighieri, Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa, as well as the wisdom traditions of Christian scriptures. Creation Spirituality is also strongly aligned with ecological and environmental movements of the late 20th century and embraces numerous spiritual traditions around the world, including Buddhism, Judaism, Sufism, and Native American spirituality, with a focus on “deep ecumenism.”
Fox has written more than 30 books, including Original Blessing (1983), that have sold millions of copies and by the mid-1990s had attracted a “huge and diverse following.” He was likened by academic theologians in one New York Times article to the controversial and influential 20th century Jesuit priest, philosopher and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, particularly for his interpretations of issues such as the doctrine of original sin and the Cosmic Christ and for the resulting conflicts with church authorities.
He is currently visiting scholar at the Academy of the Love of Learning in Santa Fe, New Mexico and lives in Oakland, California.
Heather Forest
Heather Forest's unique minstrel style of storytelling blends original music, folk guitar, poetry, prose and the sung and spoken word. She has toured her repertoire of world folktales for the past thirty years to theatres, major storytelling festivals, and conferences throughout the United States and abroad.She has recorded eight albums of storytelling and written seven children's picture books based on folktales, being selected as a recipient of the 1997 Circle of Excellence Award presented by the National Storytelling Association.
Her many performance credits include The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., The National Storytelling Festival, TN, The Museum of Modern Art, NY, The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Scotland, Tales of Graz Festival, Austria, and the Glistening Waters Storytelling Festival, New Zealand. She has been a featured teller at major storytelling festivals throughout the United States, a keynote speaker at the National Storytelling Congress (USA), and has taught storytelling and communication arts seminars as a guest lecturer at universities and at the National Storytelling Institute (USA) in Jonesborough, Tennessee.
Ms. Forest holds a Masters Degree in Storytelling from East Tennessee State University and a Ph.D. in Leadership and Change from Antioch University . She is founder and Executive Director of Story Arts, a cultural arts organization in Huntington , New York , U.S.A. that presents storytelling concerts and workshops in schools, theatres, and community centers in the Long Island , New York area.
Julian Foley
Julian Foley, public relations coordinator for Untied Religions Initiative, joined URI’s development and communications teams in September, 2010. She produces and edits web content and URI publications, handles public relations and writes grant proposals. Julian has been working as a writer and editor since 2002. She became interested in interfaith cooperation while doing research and editing for journalist Sandy Tolan’s powerful book, "The Lemon Tree," published by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2006, about an unlikely friendship between an Arab and a Jew in Ramla. Julian has also done work for Free Range Graphics, Firebrand Books and the California Teachers Association’s Institute of Teaching, among others. Julian holds master’s degrees in Journalism and Latin American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland. She lives in Berkeley with her husband and two children.
Sherry Fohr
Sherry Fohr (PhD) co-founded the Interfaith Studies Program in 2017 at Converse College after 16 years of experience teaching World Religions and other courses in religious studies and anthropology. She is currently an Associate Professor of Religious Studies, the Curricular Director of the Interfaith Studies Program, the Religious Studies Coordinator, and Co-Director of Women’s Studies at Converse College. Her awards and grants include a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship (while a doctoral student at The University of Virginia), an Arthur Vining Davis Grant (awarded to Converse College to found the Interfaith Studies Program), the Curriculum Innovation Award (at Converse College), and The Blue Key Honor Society’s Teacher of the Year Award (while teaching at Wofford College). Her research abroad in India resulted in numerous articles, presentations, and the book, Jainism: Guides for the Perplexed. Her current research focuses on interfaith cooperation via social media and the interfaith work of Jains in the United States.
Jeannine Hill Fletcher
Jeannine Hill Fletcher is Professor of Theology at Fordham University, Bronx NY. She is author of Motherhood as Metaphor: Engendering Interreligious Dialogue (Fordham University Press, 2013) and Monopoly on Salvation? A Feminist Approach to Religious Pluralism (Continuum, 2005). On April 3, 2014, Fordham University will host an academic conference designed to test the viability of ‘motherhood’ and ‘maternity’ as metaphor in Jewish, Christian and Muslim contexts. For more information, contact Jeannine Hill Fletcher at hillfletche@fordham.edu.
Eileen Flanagan
Eileen Flanagan is a Quaker writer, teacher, and activist. Her latest book, The Wisdom to Know the Difference: When to Make a Change – and When to Let Go (2010), was endorsed by the Dalai Lama and won a 2010 Silver Nautilus Book Award. Her articles have appeared on the Huffington Post, Beliefnet, and the Washington Post’s online On Faith column, as well as print magazines, such as Tikkun. She leads the board of the Earth Quaker Action Team, which uses nonviolent direct action to work for a just and sustainable economy. She is currently revising a memoir about trying to live a sustainable and Spirit-led life in a society that doesn’t encourage that. To follow her progress, visit www.eileenflanagan.com.