Sable Manson, Ph.D., is the Assistant Director for Student Leadership and Development at the University of Southern California’s Joint Educational Project (JEP). She also serves as Interfaith Scholars Program Director, through the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life at USC. Sable was identified as one of the Future50 Faith leaders in Los Angeles by USC’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture and the Interreligious Council of Southern California (IRC) in 2014 and has served as Interfaith Minister-in-Residence for the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles since 2018. Sable served as Vice-Chair for NASPA’s (Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education) Spirituality and Religion in Higher Education Knowledge Community (SRHE_KC) from 2019 - 2021. Her previous research on #DigitalFaith examined how individuals have used digital spaces and technologies for spiritual and religious exploration. More recently Sable, along with her co-editor J.T. Snipes, Ph. D., edited Remixed and Reimagined: Innovations in Religion, Spirituality, and (Inter)Faith in Higher Education (2020).
Louise Mangan
Louise Mangan is passionate about grounding regenerative change in the wisdom of heart-mind practices that connect us with our inner teacher, with one another, and with the natural world. Centring Prayer is her regular personal practice. She received her BA from UBC, ministry foundations from Vancouver School of Theology, and MDIV from Toronto School of Theology. She trained as a Spiritual Director with Pacific Jubilee Associates.
Louise was actively involved in the founding executive of the InterSpiritual Centre of Vancouver Society in 2004. She chaired the Building and Technical Committee, and served twice as Chair of the Board between 2005 and 2018. Louise represented the ISC in the collaborative development of the Greater Vancouver Compassion Network and its Compassionate Cities Campaign. And she co-founded Women of Spirit and Faith Canada (later known as Women and Wisdom Canada), assisting regularly with Women and Wisdom programming.
In addition to her role with the Interspiritual Sustainability Council, Louise serves as a Director of the Multifaith Action Society, and as a co-founder of several multi-regional Cooperation Circles of the United Religions Initiative. She offers spiritual guidance and support to individuals and couples of various spiritual backgrounds. And she divides her personal time between enjoying her grandchildren and adult children in Vancouver, and enjoying her home on Salt Spring Island with her partner, friends, family and goofy dog.
Lia Mandelbaum
Lia Mandelbaum is a participant in the interfaith Future50 cohort, profiled in the December 2014 TIO. She is a graduate student in social work at Cal State L.A., where she also received a Bachelor’s in social work. Over the past three years, Lia interned at a mental health care agency in South Central Los Angeles, at an LAUSD high school in downtown Los Angeles as a psychiatric social worker, and is presently interning with the Alzheimer’s Association.
Starting in 2008, she worked in development for Beit T’Shuvah, a non-profit residential treatment center and synagogue in L.A. Lia volunteers for JQ International, an LGBTQ Jewish movement, and sings in a Muslim-Jewish singing group called the Peace Choir. She has helped to produce various events for Craig N’ Co. and the Sinai Temple Community. She is an alumna of the Jeremiah Fellowship with Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice, and New Ground: A Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change. Lia has a blog with the Jewish Journal called “Sacred Intentions” and also enjoys public speaking and often shares her personal journey. She has become a leader in developing cultures of compassion as an organizer of “The Compassion Games: Survival of the Kindest.”
Mark Mancao
Mark Mancao is communications manager for United Religions Initiative (URI). In that role he manages content at uri.org, its online community features, URI’s brand, the design of print and digital resources, community surveys, orientation/training resources, and other communications projects. With two graduate degrees in religion, he worked as director of JUSTPEACE Center for Mediation and Conflict Transformation, a United Methodist start-up in Chicago and Washington DC. In 2006, Mark moved with his partner and two cats across the country to San Francisco, California, to serve as executive director of RockRose Institute. RockRose produced an international conference, “Facing Violence: Justice, Religion and Conflict Resolution-World Forum 2007,” while sharing offices with URI. After a successful World Forum, Mark moved down the hall and has been working with URI ever since.
Maij Vu Mai
Maij Vu Mai (pronounced like MAGE, pronouns they/he/sib/homie/fam) is a powerful Black Asian Trans Queer Neuroexpansive MaGe who is devoted to creating radical healing spaces where marginalized folks can tap into their own alchemical power and knowledge ecosystems. They exist and play at the intersections of the Bipolar/Multipolar spectrum, ADHD, and OCD. All of these neurodistinct experiences color and shape the living textures of his day-to-day life- which can be described as an ever shifting cauldron of power, agency, and meaning-making in a world that seeks to eliminate them. Living on these spectrums has allowed Maij to create new constellations of care and support and embrace the temperature play of their dynamic emotional landscape. They currently serve as the Asian/American and Pacific Islander Roundtable Coordinator for The Center for LGBTQ Studies and Gender in Religion. Maij is a mood bender, an emotional alchemist, and a magi who joyfully explores their body wisdom so that they can share that wisdom with others.
Rabbi Allen S. Maller
Rabbi Allen S. Maller attended the University of California, Los Angeles from 1956 to 1960, majoring in physics. He studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem his junior year and while there decided to become a rabbi.
Rabbi Maller has published more than 200 articles in more than two dozen journals, magazines and websites as varied as Jewish Social Studies, US Catholic, Islamicity, and The Journal of Dharma. He is author of a book on Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) and editor of the Tikun series of High Holiday Prayer Books.
Rabbi Maller taught in the theology department of Loyola Marymount University for three years. In 2006, after 39 years as Rabbi of Temple Akibain Culver City California, he retired.
His website is: www.rabbimaller.com. He can be contacted on malleraj@aol.com.
Tom Mahon
Tom Mahon has written about technology as publicist, journalist, novelist, dramatist and activist.
Since the early 1990s, he has spoken and written widely on the need to reconnect technical capability with social responsibility. Speaking venues have included MIT, the International Solid State Circuits Conference, the United Religions Initiative, the San Francisco Fringe Festival, assemblies sponsored by the U.S. State Department, as well as to local congregations, senior centers, and middle school students. His writings have been published in The Wall Street Journal, Electronic Engineering Times, National Catholic Reporter and Business 2.0.
In addition, the work has been covered in The New York Times, The International Herald-Tribune, CNN, CNET, Business Week and The San Jose Mercury, among others.
Mahon is the author of The Fandango Involvement (1980), the first novel set in Silicon Valley; and Charged Bodies: People, Power and Paradox in Silicon Valley (1985). He has also written and performed two one-man plays about humankind’s mixed history with our tools: “At Home in the Universe” and “Are We Having Fun Yet!”
Mahon holds an MBA in International Business and has had his own public relations consultancy since 1984 representing firms in electronic and genetic engineering. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He and his wife have three grown children.
Sally Mahé
Sally Mahé is the director of Organizational Development at United Religions Initiative, where she has been on the core staff since 1996. Her work is leading URI from vision to practice. She supports the international staff and regional development, and designs cross-cultural interfaith gatherings. Sally is co-author of Birth of a Global Community: Appreciative Inquiry in Action (2003) and A Greater Democracy Day by Day (2004). Sally holds an M.Ed. from Harvard and a MA in Theology from General Episcopal Seminary. Prior to URI, Sally developed a nationally recognized curriculum and trained teachers in the basic principles of democracy.
Dawn MacKeen
Dawn Anahid MacKeen is an award winning investigative journalist who spent nearly a decade on her grandfather's story. Previously she was a staff writer at Salon, Newsday, and Smart Money. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Elle, the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. She lives in Southern California.
John R. Mabry
John R. Mabry, PhD teaches comparative theology, scripture, and pastoral ministry at the Chaplaincy Institute. Rev. Mabry is also the director of the Interfaith Spiritual Direction Certificate program. He is a United Church of Christ pastor and the author of many textbooks on interfaith spiritual guidance, among many other subjects. Check out his website and get a FREE BOOK at www.johnrmabry.com/free
Oren Lyons
Oren Lyons is a Native American Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga and Seneca Nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy), as well as a member of the Council of Chiefs of the Haudenosaunee, professor, author, publisher, advocate of Indigenous and environmental causes, and honorary chairman of the Iroquois Nationals Lacrosse team.
Lyons was given the name Joagquisho, Bright Sun with a Strong Wind, at birth and grew up on the Seneca and Onondoga reservations where he was raised in the Iroquois traditional ways of thinking, being, and knowing. In 8th grade, he dropped out of school and later became a talented amateur boxer. In 1950, at age 20 he was drafted into the US Army where he continued to excel in boxing. He returned to the reservation in 1953 where he was recruited by the coach of the Syracuse University lacrosse team. Lyons once again proved an outstanding athlete and was named an All-American lacrosse goalie while at Syracuse and his post-college lacrosse activities helped get him elected to the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame in the US and Canada. He was named 'Man of the Year in Lacrosse' by the NCAA in 1989. Lyons maintains his close connections to lacrosse and continues to be an inspiring role model to both Native and non-Native lacrosse athletes. Lyons graduated from Syracuse in 1958 with a degree in Fine Arts and then lived and worked as a commercial artist in New York City.
In 1970, Lyons returned to the Onondoga Nation during which time he accepted the role of Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga and Seneca Nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) and began his advocacy work on Indigenous and environmental issues. In addition to his duties as Faithkeeper, Lyons is a professor at SUNY - Buffalo where he directs the Native American Studies program within the department of American Studies. Lyons also co-founded Daybreak, a national Indian newspaper, with John Mohawk, a Seneca teacher and journalist. Lyons actively participates in many national and international forums including the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations. Lyons has received many awards and honors, including an honorary law degree from Syracuse University, the Ellis Island Congressional Medal of Honor, the National Audubon Society's Audubon Medal for service to the cause of conservation, and the first International Earth Day Award from the United Nations. In 1992, Lyons became the first Indigenous individual to address the U.N. General Assembly. Lyons serves on the board of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development and has been a Native American representative to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting since 1974.
David Loy
David Robert Loy is a professor, writer, Zen teacher in the Sanbo Kyodan tradition of Japanese Zen Buddhism, and one of the founding members of the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center, near Boulder, Colorado.
His essays and books have been translated into many languages. His articles appear regularly in the pages of major journals such as Tikkun and Buddhist magazines including Tricycle, Turning Wheel, Shambhala Sun and Buddhadharma, as well as in a variety of scholarly journals. He is on the editorial or advisory boards of the journals Cultural Dynamics, Worldviews, Contemporary Buddhism, Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, and World Fellowship of Buddhists Review. He is also on the advisory boards of Buddhist Global Relief, the Clear View Project, Zen Peacemakers, and the Ernest Becker Foundation.
David lectures nationally and internationally on various topics, focusing primarily on the encounter between Buddhism and modernity: what each can learn from the other. He is especially concerned about social and ecological issues.
Brie Loskota
Brie Loskota is the executive director of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Her research focuses on how religions change and make change in the world. She is co-founder and senior advisor to the American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute and a trainer-facilitator with the United State Institute of Peace’s Generation Change program, where she has trained young leaders from across the Middle East and Africa.
Her writing have been published by Religion Dispatches, Los Angeles Magazine, Huffington Post, Trans-Missions, the Brookings Institute, the Aspen Institute and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Her commentary has also been featured in the Los Angeles Time, National Public Radio, Washington Post, Public Broadcasting, Voice of America and Take Part Live.
She is actively involved in several community and non-profit groups that work at the intersection of religion and the public square, including NewGround: A Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change, Religion Dispatches, the Guibord Center: Religion Inside Out, L.A. Voice, L.A. Emergency Preparedness Foundation and Jewish World Watch, where she also chaired the Solar Cooker Project, an initiative that supplies solar cookers to Darfuri Refugees living in Chad. She also serves as the faith sector liaison for the Los Angeles Emergency Preparedness Foundation, which coordinates private sector disaster response with the city’s Emergency Operations Center.
The World Economic Forum selected Loskota as a member of their 2017 Young Global Leaders class. She is a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Truman National Security Fellow, and a Homegrown Violent Extremism Study Group associate at USC.
Kristen Looney
Kristen Looney is an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Maryland, and project director of the Religious Freedom Center of the Newseum Institute. As a religious leader and educator, Kristen specializes in developing partnerships, training, and equipping leaders with dialogue skills. Kristen is formerly the Head of Programs and Partnerships for the Tony Blair Faith Foundation (TBFF) in the United States, where she led the strategy and expansion of its Face to Faith global schools program in the U.S. As a trained facilitator, Kristen facilitated over 130 global video conferences with students around the world. Before working at TBFF, Kristen spent eighteen years as an educator in both parish and independent schools.
Jeffery D. Long
Jeffery D. Long is professor of Religion and Asian Studies at Elizabethtown College, in Pennsylvania. His graduate degrees are from the University of Chicago Divinity School and his undergraduate degree is from the University of Notre Dame. He also studied for two years at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India. He is the author of A Vision for Hinduism (2007), Jainism: An Introduction (2009), The Historical Dictionary of Hinduism (2011), and the forthcoming Indian Philosophy: An Introduction. His articles have appeared in Prabuddha Bharata, The Journal of Religion, Science and Spirit, and Creative Transformation, among others.
Dr. Long is associated with the Vedanta Society, DĀNAM (the Dharma Academy of North America), and the Hindu American Foundation. A major theme of Long’s work is religious pluralism, a topic he approaches from a perspective informed by the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and which he refers to as a “Hindu process theology.”
Kathryn M. Lohre
Kathryn Mary Lohre is the president of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA and director of ecumenical and inter-religious relations for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Prior to that, she served as assistant director of the Pluralism Project at Harvard University, Dr. Diana Eck’s premier research project on religious diversity in the United States.
Kathryn received her BA in psychology, religion and women’s studies from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota in 1999. She earned her Master of Divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School in 2003. In 2011, the Graduate Theological Foundation in Mishawaka, Indiana conferred an honorary Doctor of Divinity to Kathryn, "in recognition of her election as president-elect of the National Council of Churches and also in recognition of her contributions to women's interfaith issues and pluralism."
Susan L. Lipson
Susan L. Lipson is an author, independent writing teacher, and free-lance book editor, as well as a speaker, program creator, and volunteer in the Interfaithcommunity and in her own Jewish faith community. She serves on the board of the Poway Interfaith Team (POINT). She has taught religious school, as well as creative writing workshops and tutorials. In addition to writing about faith-related topics, she writes poetry, songs, and fiction for both adults and children. She occasionally serves as a cantorial soloist, too. Susan has a passion for making connections with others and erasing social boundaries. Her publications and blog posts can be found online by searching “Susan L. Lipson, Author & Teacher.”
Cynthia Lindner
Cynthia Lindner (DMin’99), is Director of Ministry Studies and Clinical Faculty for Preaching and Pastoral Care at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
Ian Linden
Ian Linden is a senior advisor at the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, formerly director of the Social Action Programme, Faiths Act, and an associate professor in the Study of Religion at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in the University of London. He has published a number of books on religion in Africa and, recently, two major studies on faith and globalization, “A New Map of the World and Global Catholicism.” He was, for fifteen years, director of the Catholic Institute for International Relations and was awarded the CMG for work for human rights in 2000. He is a member of the Christian-Muslim Forum of the UK, worked in interfaith dialogue with Shi’a leaders in Iran, and has acted as a DfID (UK government Department for International Development) consultant on matters of faith and development.
Kay Lindahl
Kay Lindahl, founder of The Listening Center, is a skilled presenter and workshop leader who teaches that listening is a sacred art and a spiritual practice. She is the author of the award winning book, The Sacred Art of Listening. Kay is also a dedicated spokesperson for the interfaith movement and is on the Board of Directors for Women of Spirit and Faith, an Ambassador for the Parliament of the World's Religions, a past trustee of the Global Council for the United Religions Initiative, and is Past Chair of the North American Interfaith Network. Lindahl has presented her work in diverse settings – local, regional, national and international. Locally she has created programs, board retreats, training for spiritual directors, in-service training for non-profit organizations and lectures on college campuses. She is the founding president of the The Interfaith Observer (TIO) Board of Directors.