Eliana Kaya is a veteran journalist, community organizer, and media consultant. She is an alumna of the 2010 NewGround Fellowship and is training as an interfaith facilitator. Currently she is writing a book about her time as a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces during the second Intifada. She is also actively developing interfaith gardening initiatives based in Los Angeles.
Valarie Kaur
Valarie Kaur is an award-winning filmmaker, legal advocate, theologian, and public speaker. She serves as founding director of Groundswell, a non-profit initiative at Auburn Theological Seminary committed to building the multifaith movement for justice. Combining storytelling and advocacy, Valarie has led grassroots campaigns on urgent social challenges facing her generation, including racial justice, religious pluralism, immigrant rights, prison reform, LGBT equality, and a moral economy. A third-generation Sikh American, her critically acclaimed documentary film Divided We Fall (2008) on hate crimes after Sept 11th inspired national grassroots dialogue. She has been invited to speak on her work in 200 U.S. cities and media outlets such as CNN, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, NPR, BBC, and the New York Times. Valarie earned bachelors degrees in religion and international relations at Stanford University, masters in theological studies at Harvard Divinity School, and a law degree at Yale Law School, where she currently trains students in the art of visual advocacy as founding director of the Yale Visual Law Project.
Beth Katz
Beth Katz is the founder and executive director of Project Interfaith in Omaha, Nebraska. Beth got bitten by the interfaith bug in college, co-founding a student interfaith group and developing a passion for a world where people of all faiths, beliefs, and cultures are valued and included. After receiving graduate degrees in public policy and social work, she came back home to Omaha to start Project Interfaith. Along with the Project’s many programs, Beth is a frequent guest speaker, at home and abroad, including the 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Melbourne. Her monthly column, “The Accidental Theist,” is published on the blog Omaha.net. She teaches international conflict resolution and religious diversity courses at the University of Nebraska and is on the board of the Center for Catholic Thought at Creighton University.
Anneke Kat
Anneke Kat is a community development practitioner experienced in working with refugees, women, and youth on issues of education, economic empowerment, and interfaith community building. Her academic and professional experiences have provided her with a chance to work with urban communities in Sub Saharan Africa and the United States. Anneke obtained a B.A. in International Development and Social Change and a M.A. in Community Development and Planning, both from Clark University. She currently serves as the Youth & Community Program Manager for Interfaith Philadelphia.
Jack Karn
As the Program Director of Jerusalem Peacebuilders, Jack Karn oversees and leads the development of JPB’s interfaith programs. An experienced educator with a passion for service, Jack has spent much of the last three and a half years overseas in the Holy Land teaching leadership and peacebuilding courses in Israeli and Palestinian high schools. He served as a volunteer in Jerusalem and Nazareth, 2016-18, with the Young Adult Service Corps of the Episcopal Church. Jack has also worked with World Learning's Youth Programs and the CONTACT Program of SIT Graduate Institute. He holds a B.A. in History from the University of Maine and an M.A. in Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation from SIT Graduate Institute. Currently, Jack is in the process of becoming a Vocational Deacon in the Episcopal Church.
Abraham Karickam
Abraham Karickam holds a PhD in English and interreligious studies and MA degrees in history and literature. He has served as director of comparative literature at Mar Thoma College, Tiruvala, Kerala, in India. Formerly a journalist, Dr. Karickam is a retired college administrator responsible for the literature departments in numerous colleges in south India. Involved in interfaith activities for the past 20 years, he serves as URI’s South India zone coordinator and president of Interfaith Students Movements in south India. He trains young adults in interfaith peacebuilding and is participating in the URI Moral Imagination/Peacebuilding training. He is the author of 15 books, including Concept of the Upanishads, the Bible and the Qu’ar and Intertextuality of the Holy Books.
Brad Karelius
Father Brad Karelius has been an Episcopal priest since 1971 in the Diocese of Los Angeles, for 30 years the pastor of Church of the Messiah, a multi-cultural congregation located in the Logan Barrio in central Orange County, CA. He founded “Hands Together – a Center for Children,” providing high quality early childhood education to the poorest children in Santa Ana. A new center currently serves homeless mothers and children. Net proceeds from the sale of “The Spirit in the Desert” go directly to support Hands Together. Fr. Brad has been Associate Professor for philosophy and world religions at Saddleback Community College, since 1973. For many years he has researched and taught Native American spirituality, and this knowledge is integrated in The Spirit in the Desert. Fr. Brad is married to Janice Karelius, a Family Nurse Practitioner doing Emergency Medicine, and they have two adult children.
Dr. Azza Karam
Dr. Azza Karam serves as the Senior Advisor on Culture at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), where she coordinates fund-wide outreach with faith-based partners and chairs the UN Inter-Agency Task Force on FBO (faith-based organizations) partners on the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals), and development. Before she joined UNFPA, she was the Senior Policy Research Advisor at the United Nations Development Program in the Regional Bureau for Arab States. Karam also worked as special advisor on Middle East and Islamic Affairs and director of the Women’s Programs at the World Conference of Religions for Peace and as a senior program officer at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. She has served as lecturer at the University of Amsterdam and as the program manager at the Centre for the Study of Ethnic Conflict at the Queens University of Belfast. Karam also served as consultant to international organizations in the Arab region, Central Asia, and Europe. Her publications include Transnational Political Islam (2004) and Islamisms, Women and the State (1998).
Samir Kalra
Samir Kalra is the Hindu American Foundation (HAF)’s California based director and senior fellow for Human Rights. HAF is a non-profit advocacy and human rights group seeking to provide a progressive voice to more than two million Hindu Americans. Samir plays a leading role in HAF’s human rights, public policy, and legal advocacy efforts, and is the author of the Foundation’s annual human rights report, public policy briefs on Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Malaysia, and co-author of written testimony submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution detailing a Hindu perspective on the state of religious liberty in the U.S. Samir is licensed to practice law in the State of California and completed his Juris Doctorate degree from Santa Clara University. He received a B.A. in Political Science and a B.A. in Psychology and Social Behavior from the University of California at Irvine.
Mark Juergensmeyer
Mark Juergensmeyer is professor of Sociology and director of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Juergensmeyer is the winner of the Grawemeyer Award for his book Terror in the Mind of God (2000). He is the editor of Global Religions: An Introduction (2003) and is also the author of The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State and Gandhi's Way: A Handbook of Conflict Resolution (1994), both from University of California Press.
Kile Jones
Kile Jones is working towards a Ph.D. in Religion, Ethics, and Society at Claremont Lincoln University. His interests include religious studies, secularism, liberal religion, and unbelief. Mr. Jones considers himself influenced by secular humanism, atheism, and Unitarian Universalism. He is the Founder/Editor-in-Chief of Claremont Journal of Religion and is a Contributing Scholar at State of Formation.
Robert Jonas
Robert A. Jonas, Ed.D. (Harvard University), M.T.S. (Weston Jesuit School of Theology), is the director of The Empty Bell, a contemplative sanctuary in Northampton, MA. He is a retired psychotherapist, a theologian, retreat leader, musician, and spiritual mentor. The Empty Bell website is an internet resource for contemplative Christians. A Christian in the Carmelite tradition, he has also received spiritual formation with Buddhist teachers.
Dr. Jonas is a member of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies and the Eckhart Society, a past Board member of the Henri Nouwen Society, a Trustee of Trustees of Reservations, and the Board Chair of the Kestrel Land Trust in the Connecticut River Valley of Western Massachusetts. His books include Rebecca: A Father’s Journey from Grief to Gratitude (1996), Henri Nouwen (1998), and The Essential Henri Nouwen (2009).
Robert is also a student of Sui-Zen, the Japanese bamboo flute (shakuhachi). He has shared his music in many secular and spiritual contexts and has played at three Buddhist-Christian retreats with the Dalai Lama, most memorably under the Bodhi Tree in India. His CD’s, Blowing Bamboo, New Life from Ruins and Many Paths, One Joy are available at: www.contemplative-life.org, and on iTunes. His playing is featured in the new DVD, “Jesus & Buddha: Practicing Across Traditions” (Old Dog Productions). Visit The Empty Bell’s Facebook page for more information.
Lyla June Johnston
Lyla June Johnston is a Fellow with the Original Caretakers Initiative at the Center for Earth Ethics. She was raised in Taos, New Mexico and is a descendent of Diné (Navajo) and Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) lineages.
She is a co-founder of The Taos Peace and Reconciliation Council, which works to heal intergenerational trauma and ethnic division in the northern New Mexico. She is a walker within the Nihigaal Bee Iiná Movement, and is the lead organizer of the Black Hill Unity Concert. She is the also the founder of Regeneration Festival, an annual celebration of children that occurs in 13 countries around the world every September.
In 2012, she graduated with honors from Stanford University with a degree in Environmental Anthropology. She is a musician, public speaker and internationally recognized performance poet. Lyla June ultimately attributes any achievements to Creator who gave her the tools and resources she uses to serve humanity.
Trebbe Johnson
Trebbe Johnson is the founder and director of Radical Joy for Hard Times, a non-profit organization devoted to finding and making beauty in wounded places. She is the author of The World Is a Waiting Lover: Desire and the Quest for the Beloved (2005). Her articles on nature, spirit, and myth have been published in Orion, Sierra, The Ecologist, Spirituality and Health, and many other publications. She is a consulting editor and frequent contributor to Parabola. A lifelong adventurer in inner and outer worlds, Trebbe has camped alone in the Arctic; studied classical Indian dance; worked as a model, street sweeper, and award-winning multimedia producer; and led contemplative journeys in a clearcut forest, at Ground Zero in New York, and in the Sahara Desert. She lives with her husband in rural northeastern Pennsylvania, currently under exploitation by gas fracking. She is working on a new book, Aphrodite at the Landfill: Beauty as Earth Activism.
Kurt Johnson
Kurt Johnson is co-author, with David Robert Ord, of the forthcoming book The Coming Interspiritual Age (2012). A comparative religionist and also a monastic for many years, Kurt was a long-term associate of Brother Wayne Teasdale (author of the terms “interspiritual” and “interspirituality”) and founded, with Bro. Wayne and others, Interspiritual Dialogue in 2002. Its vast “Interspiritual Multiplex” resource website is at www.isdna.org. Kurt is a trustee of One Faith Interfaith Seminary.
Kurt also holds a doctorate in evolution and ecology and recently retired from a 30-year high profile career in the sciences. His best-selling book Nabokov's Blues (co-authored with journalist S. Coates) was named a "top 10 book in science" in 2000 by the Washington Post and Library Journal, More can be learned about Dr. Johnson’s dual careers at Wikipedia (Kurt Johnson, entomologist).
Michael Jitosho
Michael Jitosho, is a second-generation Japanese American born and raised in southern California. He graduated from University of California, San Diego with a major in biology and is currently an optometry student. In 2013 he received first ordination from the Higashi Honganji, a Jōdo Shinshū Buddhist organization in Kyoto, Japan, and is currently assisting the resident minister at the West Covina Buddhist Temple in California. Jitosho enjoys his involvement with the temple because of the variety of guest speakers and lecture series that add contrast to Jōdo Shinshū. He feels that when guests share their different faiths, they provide one another with an opportunity to think about Jōdo Shinshū in a different light and the chance for discussion, learning things they never thought about before. When Jitosho is not in the university library studying for exams, he enjoy helping at temple fundraisers, yet another way to experience the Dharma with others who also put effort in supporting the temple and its future as a Sangha.
Zola Jesus
Zola Jesus is the stage name of Nika Roza Danilova, a Russian-American singer/songwriter who combines industrial, classical, electronic, goth and experimental rock influences. Raised in the Wisconsin wilderness, Zola Jesus took an early interest in music. A classically trained opera singer with a penchant for noisy, avant-garde sounds, she launched her career with a series of lo-fi releases that pitted her soaring vocals against harsh industrial clatter and jittery synths. The signature Zola Jesus sound became more hi-fi as she began to explore her own skewed vision of pop music on releases like Stridulum, Valusia, and Conatus. Learn more about her work and listen at zolajesus.com.
Philip Jenkins
Philip Jenkins is Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor, and serves as co-director for the Program on Historical Studies of Religion in the Institute for Studies of Religion. He is one of the world’s leading religion scholars. A historian by training, Jenkins’ work has been lauded in many different disciplines including sociology, criminology, and religious studies.
Dr Jenkins’ major current interests include the study of global Christianity; of new and emerging religious movements; and of twentieth century U.S. history, chiefly post-1970. He has published twenty-four books, which have been translated into ten languages. Some recent titles include Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History (2000), Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years (2010), and Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can’t Ignore the Bible’s Violent Verses (2011).
Jenkins holds a Ph.D. in History from Cambridge University, where he spent an additional three years working with Sir Leon Radzinowicz, the pioneer of Criminology at Cambridge. In fact, Jenkins has an enduring interest in issues of crime and deviance, and the construction of social problems. He is considered an international expert on the subject of terrorism. The Economist magazine has called him “one of America’s best scholars of religion.”
jem Jebbia
jem Jebbia is a PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at Stanford University. In her studies, jem focuses on interfaith pedagogies, race and gender in interfaith communities, and material religion in California. Her current projects include an ethnographic study of the #TacoTrucksatEveryMosque Movement and a pop-up exhibit called Golden State Sacred, depicting the religious history of California.
Uroosa Jawed
Uroosa Jawed joined the Tri-Faith Initiative in October of 2018. A graduate of Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, she earned her bachelor’s of science degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology in May 2002. Uroosa has worked in philanthropy over the past ten years, and began her career as Planned Giving Coordinator for the Islamic Society of North America. She has been instrumental in raising funds for both local and national non-profit organizations through capital campaigns and corporate sponsorships. Uroosa is passionate about serving her community through volunteer work and advocacy. She proudly serves on the board of directors of Omaha Girls Rock.
A first generation immigrant, Uroosa moved to Indiana from Karachi, Pakistan at the age of five years old with her parents. A lifetime Hoosier, she now finds herself thriving in the Dundee community of Omaha with her daughter Laila and her son Oliver. A writer by avocation, she has served on the board of the Indiana Writers Center since 2013. Her poetry has been published in Hoosier Lit magazine and she is currently working on her first manuscript.