Dr. Clare Amos | World Council of Churches, Ret.

Dr. Clare Amos has recently retired from the position that she held for 7 years as head of the interreligious office of the World Council of Churches. During her years working for the World Council of Churches she continued and developed the bilateral dialogue relationship between the WCC and the Centre for Interreligious Dialogue (CID) in Iran, and visited Iran on two occasions at the invitation of the CID. She also proactively worked to develop closer ties between the 'college' of the WCC (the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey) and the University of Religions and Denominations in Qom, and on several occasions welcomed staff or students from the URD to Bossey. She also facilitated other contacts with leading members of the Shia Muslim community, especially Dr. Mohammed Shomali and his seminary based in the UK.

Prior to working at the WCC, Clare had been (since 2001) the Coordinator of the Network for Interfaith Concerns for the Anglican Communion. Among her achievements there was the publication, in 2008, of a report Generous Love: the truth of the Gospel and the call for dialogue, which sets out a theological rationale for Anglican interfaith engagement.  Earlier in her life Clare lived in the Middle East for 10 years, including 5 years in Lebanon (during the time of the civil war), where she first learned about and appreciated the particular charism of Shia Islam.

The Rev. Dr. Chloe Breyer | Executive Director, The Interfaith Center of New York

Dr. Breyer is Executive Director of the Interfaith Center of New York, a nationally-recognized nonprofit that brings together diverse grassroots religious leaders with civic officials to address New York City’s most pressing social concerns. In her time at ICNY, she has focused on teaching religious literacy to teachers, social workers and police officers; preventing bias crimes; and building multi-faith advocacy coalition promoting criminal justice and immigration reform.

Since September 11 2001, Dr. Breyer ‘s international interfaith work has included an NYC Episcopal-Muslim initiative to rebuild a mosque in Afghanistan north of Kabul as well as a girls’ school and health clinic in Wardak Province. Dr. Breyer is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and she attended the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Annual Christian-Muslim Peace Summits in Beruit, Lebanon (2012), Rome, Italy (2014), and Tehran, the Islamic Republic of Iran (2016) as a member of the Episcopal/Anglican Delegation. She was also part of an Interfaith Mission for Peace & Understanding, in Indonesia, Jordan, Israel, and Ramallah in 2012 supported by the Indonesian Embassy to the United States.

An Episcopal Priest in the Diocese of New York, Breyer has been Associate Priest at St. Philip’s Church in Harlem since 2012. She is the author of The Close: A Young Woman’s First Year at Seminary (Basic Books 2000) as well as several chapter contributions, op-eds, and articles. Her Doctoral Dissertation Against Islamophobia: Interfaith Activism as Christian Peacemaking  was in Christian Ethics at Union Theological Seminary (May 2017).

The Right Reverend John Bryson Chane D.D. | Eighth Bishop of Washington, DC, Ret.

The Right Reverend John Bryson Chane was consecrated the Eighth Bishop of Washington, DC in June 2002 and retired in December 2011. As Bishop he served 98 schools and churches in the District and Maryland. He served as President and CEO of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation, overseeing the operations of Washington National Cathedral and the three schools on the Cathedral Close. Washingtonian Magazine named him as one of the 150 most influential leaders in the District of Columbia. He was named as one of the 50 most prominent leaders in the Anglican Communion by the London Telegraph. A leader in interreligious dialogue, he has travelled to Iran on seven occasions to meet with academics, clerics and members of the Majlis. He has met extensively with former Iranian Presidents, Mohammad Khatami, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and while attending the World Against Violence and Extremism Conference in Iran, Hassan Rouhani. In 2011 the bishop was one of four members of an interfaith delegation that travelled to Tehran to release the American hikers held by Iranian authorities. Bishop Chane is one of the few from the West to meet with and engage in discussion regarding theology and the history of US/Iranian relations with Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khameni, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Bishop Chane worked extensively with the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC as an author, conference leader and participant in the U.S. Islamic World Forum held annually in Doha, Qatar. He continues to participate with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and Search for Common Ground on matters of nation/state reconciliation and the role of religion and its impact on geopolitical stability.

The Bishop has been a frequent speaker and has written extensively on the role of religion in a post-modern, secular world. He has been a frequent presenter at the Chautauqua Institution in New York and continues to serve Washington National Cathedral as Senior Advisor for Interreligious Dialogue.

He is a graduate of Boston University, and Yale Divinity School. The Bishop has received honorary doctorates from Virginia Theological Seminary, Episcopal Divinity, Cambridge and the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale. He was selected by the United States Department of State to serve as a delegate participating at the OSCE conference on Human Rights and Religious Freedom held in Astana, Kazakhstan.

He has been a frequent Presenter on the role of Religion and Track 2 Diplomacy at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, at the Pentagon and at the Secretary of State’s Open Forum at the Department of State.

Bishop Chane currently resides in San Diego, California with Karen his wife and continues to serve the Episcopal Church as the Assisting Bishop of the Diocese of San Diego while continuing his work in the Middle East and the Levant engaging in public and theological diplomacy, seeking peaceful solutions to international conflicts.

Ambassador Mehdi Faridzadeh | Iranian Cultural Ambassador to the United Nations, 1996-2000

Mehdi Faridzadeh served as the Iranian cultural ambassador to the United Nations from 1996 to 2000. Prior to his tenure, Mr. Farizadeh served as the Vice President of Iran Broadcasting, the national Iranian media, and was the Deputy minister of culture in Iranian arts and cinema. After the completion of his ambassadorship, in the year 2000, Mr. Faridzadeh resigned from the Iranian public life and his government position.  

He worked with Columbia University as a visiting scholar, turned his work and attention to cultural exchanges and sought to foster people-to-people activities between the people of the U.S. and Iran. To that end, he organized countless dialogues, conferences, and meetings among non-profit organizations and academics including the Asia Society International, Search for Common Ground, and Pittsburgh American Middle East Institute, facilitated cultural exchanges, and collaborated with the American Institute for Iranian Studies to enable American students to study abroad in Iran. Mr. Faridzadeh served as a member of Asia Society International and Global Council.  

He served as a board member of UMAA, the Shia Muslim organization North America. Mr. Faridzadeh is currently the president of the Board of Trustees for the Islamic Institute of New York and continues his efforts to foster peace, religious tolerance, understanding, and cultural exchange among all.

Jim Fine | Quaker

Jim Fine has been involved in relief, development, and human rights work in the Middle East for more than forty years. He served most recently in the Middle East as Mennonite Central Committee interim representative for Iraq, Iran, and Jordan. In this position he was based in Amman, Jordan from March through June 2019.

Jim and his wife, Deborah, also served as MCC service workers in Iraq from 2010 to 2014. Based in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish Region in northern Iraq, they administered MCC’s relief, development, and conflict prevention work with Iraqi partner organizations throughout the country. They returned to their former positions in Erbil as interim staff for four months in 2018. 

Prior to serving with MCC Jim worked on Iraq, Iran, and other Middle East issues at the Friends Committee on National Legislation in Washington from 2006 to 2010. 

Jim served with the American Friends Service Committee in Jerusalem in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s as co-director of the Quaker Legal Aid Office and Quaker International Affairs Representative for the Middle East. He holds an MA in comparative religion from Columbia University.

John P. Hartley, PhD | World Evangelical Alliance & Evangelicals for Peace

John P. Hartley is a scholar-diplomat based at Yale University. Executive Director of Pathways for Mutual Respect, serves as Chair of Evangelicals for Peace, directs a global task force for the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) and serves on the Steering Team of the Center for Track 2 Diplomacy and Religious Freedom at the Rivendell Institute.

John’s work aims to cultivate moral imagination and empower shrewd and transformative leadership across social boundaries typically associated with tension and conflict. He got his start in the work of reconciliation and conflict transformation amidst the Liberian civil wars. He has lived, served, consulted and conducted research in more than 20 countries of Africa, Asia, Europe and North America in the 20 years since.  

He was the first American to graduate from an Iranian university since the Islamic Revolution. This gives him particularly unique perspective on issues related to Iran.

John’s scholarship emphasizes struggles over symbolic authority that give shape to competing styles of religious habitus within faith communities and so enrich (and degrade) communal and common goods in social and political life. At Yale, John is appointed in the Department of Sociology, convenes the Initiative on Religion, Politics and Society and works closely with the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. 

John represents the WEA at the United Nations on matters related to Nuclear Weapons and Disarmament.

He holds a PhD in Sociology from Yale, an MA in Iranian History from the University of Isfahan, and a BA in International Relations from the University of California at Davis.

Doug Hostetter | Pax Christi International & Evanston Mennonite Church

Doug was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, and chose to do three years of alternative service, working for Mennonite Central Committee in Vietnam, in the middle of the war zone during the height of that war.  Doug has been the Executive Secretary (Director) of the New England Regional Office of the American Friends Service in Cambridge, MA.  Doug later became Executive Secretary (Director) and then International/Interfaith Secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation – USA in Nyack, NY.  Doug was an Adjunct Professor in the Peace, Justice and Conflict Resolution Department of Goshen College, Goshen, IN, and a Visiting Scholar in the Sociology Department of Northwestern University.  Doug Hostetter was ordained as a Peace Pastor in the Mennonite Church USA and chaired the Evanston Mennonite Church Peace and Social Concerns Committee, Evanston, IL.  For over a decade, Doug was the Director of the Mennonite Central Committee United Nations Office, New York, NY.  Upon retiring, Doug joined the UN Advocacy Team of Pax Christi International, New York, NY.  

Doug organized ecumenical and interfaith gatherings between US and Canadian religious leaders and the Iranian President in New York City to explore ways that the religious community could work for peace with Iran. He was a member of a two-week friendship learning tour to Iran organized by the Mennonite Central Committee.  Last year Doug presented a paper (via Skype “Interfaith Paths to Peace,” to the first International Conference on Peace and Conflict Resolution at the University of Tehran.   Doug has published widely on the issues of war, peace and nonviolence.  

Peter G. Kelly | Knights of Malta       

Peter Kelly has long been active: In Democratic politics at the local, state, and national level; as a leader in the U.S. democratization organizations reaching across the World; in the World of business on a national and international level; and in the practice of law in Connecticut, New York and Washington, DC.

He has served as Treasurer and National Finance Chairman of the Democratic National Committee and has worked extensively with the DCCC, DSCC and DGA. He has served as a senior political advisor to Presidents Carter and Clinton and Vice President Gore. Mr. Kelly was one of the architects of USA democratization foundation structure. He was a founder, director and Treasurer of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and Chairman of the Center for Democracy, a bipartisan privately funded foundation, and International Foundation for Electoral Systems, a world-wide electoral advisory organization. All organizations were based in Washington, DC.

He is a former Chairman of Black, Kelly, Scruggs & Healey (now known as Prime Policy Group, LLC), a Washington based public affairs firm, and as Managing Director of Burson-Marsteller (Latin America), an international public relations firm. He also served as Chairman of the PBN Company, a strategic planning firm with offices in Moscow, Kiev, London, and Washington.

Among other boards, he currently serves as Chairman of the World Affairs Council of Connecticut and Vice Chairman of International Council of Middle East Studies. He also serves as a Trustee of Connecticut Public Broadcasting and Hartford Seminary. He is a co-founder, former Chairman and director of Malta House of Care, Inc., providing free medical care to the uninsured of central Connecticut.

He previously served as Chairman of the Greater Hartford Convention & Visitors Bureau, Inc., the MetroHartford Chamber of Commerce and The Greater Hartford Arts Council and as a member of the board of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce.

He has received honorary doctoral degrees from Central Connecticut State University and the University of St. Joseph.

Jo Anne Lyon | General Superintendent Emerita, The Wesleyan Church

As the founder and previous CEO of World Hope International, Jo Anne directed the faith-based relief and development organization into over 30 countries to alleviate suffering and injustice. During her time as CEO she was involved with several countries experiencing fragility, conflict and violence with a strong focus regarding women’s inclusion.  Following her 12-year tenure at World Hope, Jo Anne an ordained minister, was elected to lead the Wesleyan Church denomination globally for 8 years.  Upon her completion she was invited to become an Ambassador of the Wesleyan Church.

In 2016, she received the World Methodist Peace Award.    She serves on a variety of boards which include Bread for the World, the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, Council on Faith with the World Economic Forum, Vice-Chair of the National Association of Evangelicals and previously on President Obama’s Council on Faith and Neighborhood Partnerships. She holds a master’s degree in counseling with continued graduate studies in Historical Theology and has been granted five honorary doctorates. She and her husband Rev. Wayne Lyon have 4 children and 10 grandchildren.

Commissioner Christine MacMillan | World Evangelical Alliance

An inspiring and effective advocate of social justice for all, Commissioner Christine MacMillan has been a Salvation Army officer holding appointments in five countries: Canada and Bermuda, Australia, England, Papua New Guinea and the USA. This included the role of denominational leader (territorial commander) for the Canada & Bermuda and Papua New Guinea territories.

Trained and accredited as a counsellor, Christine has founded various centers and programs in the field of addictions, domestic violence and

homelessness. As founding director of the Salvation Army International Social Justice Commission, Christine promotes research as a pivotal approach in addressing social issues with a participative input of those who experience the challenges of humanitarian inequities.

In July 2012, following retirement from The Salvation Army, Christine was selected by the World Evangelical Alliance to serve as their Senior Advisor for Social Justice, where 600 million Christians join forces under the banner of impacting God's so loved and unloved world.

While serving with the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) as Associate Secretary General for Public Engagement Christine oversaw the work of the WEA United Nations teams in Geneva and New York inclusive of WEA networks in the fields of: Refugees, Climate Change, Humanitarian Advocacy, Peace & Reconciliation, Human Trafficking and Health and Healing. She continues with the WEA as a Senior Advisor - Social Justice while chairing their Global Task Force on Human Trafficking and representing the WEA at the United Nations.

Christine sits on various boards and advises organizations in discerning strategic ways forward in fulfilling impactful influence through paradigms of integral mission, while emphasizing intentional relationships of integrity. This includes an appointment by the United Nations in serving on the UN Multi-Faith Advisory Council.

The imprint of residing in 5 countries through her vocational career has exposed her to various cultures, values and faith perspectives while living out her ordination and calling. This has led to developed publications and co-authorship of: When Justice is the Measure and Faith, Life & Leadership. Sought after as an international speaker Christine addresses her audiences on various topics in the belief and hope that transformation is the inspiration of her personal faith in living with and for others.

Rev. Elias D. Mallon | Franciscan Friars of the Atonement

Rev. Elias D. Mallon, a native New Yorker, is an ordained member of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement (Graymoor). He obtained a licentiate degree (STL) in Old Testament studies and a PhD in Middle Eastern languages from the Catholic University of America. He researched and wrote his dissertation at Eberhard Karls Universität in Tübingen, Germany. He taught at the Washington Theological Union and American University in the Washington, DC.  He taught ancient Near Eastern languages the University of Washington in Seattle, WA.  He also worked for the then Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity (now Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity) as its faculty representative at the Institut Œcuménique of the World Council of Churches in Bossey, Switzerland.  From 1989-2001 he was Director of the Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute in New York City.

He has been involved in the Roman Catholic/Christian-Muslim dialogue on the local, national and international level since 1985 and has published several articles and two books on Islam. His most recent book is the Second expanded edition of Islam: What Catholics Need to Know (Arlington, VA: National Catholic Education Association, 2018). He has worked as an NGO representative at the United Nations for twelve years, the last six of which as representative for Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA). He is member of the UN Israel-Palestine Working Group and is engaged with the UN Working Group for Freedom of Religion or Belief.

At present Elias is the External Affairs Officer for the Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA) which supports charitable, educational, health and development projects in the Middle East, Ethiopia, eastern Europe and southern India. Here he is responsible for representing CNEWA at the UN, for research and interreligious dialogue. He is a member of the East Coast Catholic-Muslim Dialogue and is a regular contributor to One to One, the blog site of CNEWA.

Ed Martin | Eastern Mennonite University

Ed Martin served six years as director of the Center for Interfaith Engagement at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, VA, before leaving four years ago.  Prior to that, he worked five years in Nepal and 18 years as the Central and Southern Asia Area Program Director for Mennonite Central Committee (MCC).  He also worked two years as Quaker International Affairs Representative for Iran for the American Friends Service Committee. It was during these years, as well as a year in seminary, that he developed an interest in Islam and in interfaith dialogue as well as a special interest in Iran.

Since 1991, he has made about 30 visits to Iran and has very much enjoyed learning to know the people of Iran and experiencing their generous hospitality. Engagements with Iran have included collaboration with the Iranian Red Crescent Society on disaster and refugee relief, a student exchange program, a series of interfaith dialogue conferences, assisting in arranging meetings of American religious leaders with the president of Iran, recruiting and hosting a visiting Muslim scholar from Iran at the Center for Interfaith Engagement, and organizing and co-leading learning tours to Iran. The most recent learning tour was in April 2018.

He has a B.S. in General Engineering from Stanford University and a Master’s in Public Administration and Ph.D. in International Agricultural Economic Development from Cornell University.

Carlos Malavé | Bread for the World

Rev. Carlos Malavé is executive director of Christian Churches Together in the USA, an ecumenical forum of churches and Christian organizations from all the families of U.S. Christianity. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the Circle of Protection. Malavé previously served as assistant stated clerk at the Office of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and as pastor in Puerto Rico and Southern California. He holds a Master of Arts in Family Life Education from Loma Linda University and a Master of Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary. Malavé is Presbyterian. Louisville, Kentucky.

Lisa Sharon Harper | Freedom Road

From Ferguson to New York, and from Germany and South Africa to Australia and Brazil, Lisa Sharon Harper leads trainings that increase clergy and community leaders’ capacity to organize people of faith toward a just world. A prolific speaker, writer and activist, Ms. Harper is the founder and president of FreedomRoad.us, a consulting group dedicated to shrinking the narrative gap in our nation by designing forums and experiences that bring common understanding, common commitment and common action.

Ms. Harper is the author of several books, including Evangelical Does Not Equal Republican…or Democrat (The New Press, 2008); Left Right and Christ: Evangelical Faith in Politics (Elevate, 2011); Forgive Us: Confessions of a Compromised Faith (Zondervan, 2014); and the critically acclaimed, The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong can be Made Right (Waterbrook, a division of Penguin Random House, 2016). The Very Good Gospel, recognized as the “2016 Book of the Year” by Englewood Review of Books, explores God’s intent for the wholeness of all relationships in light of today’s headlines.

A columnist at Sojourners Magazine and an Auburn Theological Seminary Senior Fellow, Ms. Harper has appeared on TVOne, FoxNews Online, NPR, and Al Jazeera America. Her writing has been featured in CNN Belief Blog, The National Civic Review, Sojourners, The Huffington Post, Relevant Magazine, and Essence Magazine. She writes extensively on shalom and governance, immigration reform, health care reform, poverty, racial and gender justice, climate change, and transformational civic engagement.

Ms. Harper earned her Masters degree in Human Rights from Columbia University in New York City, and served as Sojourners Chief Church Engagement Officer. In this capacity, she fasted for 22 days as a core faster in 2013 with the immigration reform Fast for Families. She trained and catalyzed evangelicals in St. Louis and Baltimore to engage the 2014 push for justice in Ferguson and the 2015 healing process in Baltimore, and she educated faith leaders in South Africa to pull the levers of their new democracy toward racial equity and economic inclusion.

In 2015, The Huffington Post named Ms. Harper one of 50 powerful women religious leaders to celebrate on International Women’s Day. In 2019, The Religion Communicators Council named a two-part series within Ms. Harper’s monthly Freedom Road Podcast “Best Radio or Podcast Series of The Year”. The series focused on The Roots and Fruits of Immigrant Labor Exploitation in the US. And in 2020 Ms. Harper received The Bridge Award from The Selma Center for Nonviolence, Truth and Reconciliation in recognition of her dedication to bridging divides and building the beloved community.

David B. Woodward | DW & Associates LLC

David was born in Iran to Presbyterian missionaries Frank and Jean Woodward and spent his first 11 years there before the family returned permanently to the U.S. in 1968. David earned four degrees from the University of Washington including a Master of Arts in Near Eastern Languages and Civilization with a focus on Islamic philosophy and theology; he has developed fluency in Persian, Arabic and French, has worked and traveled worldwide as a leader in the field of international education, and is an active member of the Iranian-American community in the Greater Seattle Area. Throughout his career, David has sought to strengthen ties between the people of Iran and the U.S. through a variety of organizations, institutions and initiatives, and has been an outspoken advocate for genuine engagement and trust-building between people of all faiths, ethnicities and cultures. 

Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, Baptist

Dr. Gaddy is President Emeritus of Interfaith Alliance, a national organization that deals with the intersection of religion, politics, and government and Pastor Emeritus of Northminster Church in Monroe, LA, where he served as senior pastor for almost 25 years. He is recognized as a leading advocate for religious freedom protecting the boundaries between religion and government, a participant in numerous national and international inter-religious dialogues, and the author of more than 20 books.

Presently Dr. Gaddy is in the 15th year of hosting the national radio show State of Belief, serves as Senior Adviser for Interfaith Alliance, and works as a member of the Advisory Committee for the Council on Foreign Relations.

Dr. Gaddy’s past leadership roles include President of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, President of the Alliance of Baptists, member of the World Economic Forum’s Council of 1999, and a member of President Obama’s Working Group on the constitutionality of the Faith-Based and Community Office in the White House. Recognized for this passionate activism, Dr. Gaddy has received the Sikh American legal Defense and Education Fund’s “The Dorothy Height Coalition Building Award,” the American Humanist Association’s Humanist Religious Freedom Award,” the Hindu American Foundation’s “Mahatma Gandhi Award for the Advancement of Religious Pluralism,” Interfaith Alliance’s “Walter Cronkite Faith & Freedom Award,” and Muslim Advocates’ “Voice of Courage Award.”