Dr. Mishkat Al-Moumin

Former Minister of the Environment in the transitional government of Iraq

Dr. Mishkat Al-Moumin is a specialist on Iraq, the Middle East, International law and the Environment. She is an adjunct professor at George Washington University. She earned a doctorate in international law from Baghdad University and master’s degree in public administration from Harvard. Dr. Al-Moumin and developed 15 projects funded by the UN Environmental program, World Bank and World Health Organization. She set up the Environmental Council embracing all Iraqi ministries to ensure integrated environmental decision making. She is also an authority on the political dynamics of the Middle East. Dr. Al-Moumin developed for the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) a teaching guide for civic education at the high school level in Iraq to teach students how to work cooperatively on public policy problems. She has advised the USIP on strengthening Iraqi university centers focusing on peace-building, conflict resolution and human rights. Dr. Al-Moumin has published widely on international law, the International Court of Justice, the environment, the role of law in fighting corruption and the constitutional and legal rights of women. Her latest was a paper on “The Mesopotamian Marshlands: an Ecocide Case,” in the Georgetown International Environmental Law Review, Vol. 20-3, 2008.

Dr. Edward L. Ayers

President, University of Richmond

In July 2007, Edward Ayers assumed the presidency of the University of Richmond.  Previously Dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia, Ayers was named the National Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 2003.  He attended University of Tennessee and Yale University, where he received his Ph.D. in American Studies.  An historian of the American South, Ayers has written and edited ten books.  The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In the Presence of Mine Enemies: Civil War in the Heart of America won the Bancroft Prize for distinguished writing in American history and the Beveridge Prize for the best book in English on the history of the Americas since 1492. A pioneer in digital history, Ayers created The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War, a Web site that has attracted millions of users. President Clinton appointed Ayers to the National Council on the Humanities in 2000.  He also served as a Fulbright professor in the Netherlands, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Gail C. Christopher

Vice President for Programs, W.K. Kellogg Foundation

Dr. Gail C. Christopher is a nationally recognized leader in health policy, with particular expertise and experience in the issues related to social determinants of health, health disparities and public policy issues of concern to African Americans and other minority populations. Prior to joining the Foundation, Gail was vice president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies’ Office of Health, Women and Families in Washington, D.C. Previously, she was guest scholar in the governance studies department at The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and executive director of the Institute for Government Innovation at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Gail is the author or co-author of three books, a monthly column in the Federal Times, and more than 250 articles, presentations, and publications. Her national print and broadcast media credits are numerous, and include The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Dallas, Times, National Journal, Essence, “Good Morning America,” “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” National Public Radio, and documentaries on PBS and CBS.

Michael D. Henderson

Journalist, broadcaster and author

Michael  Henderson lives in the UK. He returned to Britain at the end of 2000 after 22 years in the United States mostly in Portland, Oregon. In the United States he contributed articles to newspapers all over the country, did more than 1,000 radio talks and was presenter for commercial, public and cable TV programs. In Oregon he was president of the World Affairs Council and of the English-Speaking Union and on the board of the United Nations Association and was co-founder of Oregon Uniting, a work for racial understanding. He has spoken throughout the United States to many organizations, church groups, university departments and service clubs. He has written ten books, the latest being No Enemy To Conquer - Forgiveness in An Unforgiving World published by Baylor University with a forward by the Dalai Lama.  He has addressed groups around the world as varied as the Rotary clubs of London, New Delhi and Rabaul, New Guinea; the English-Speaking Union branches of Moscow and St Petersburg, New York and Washington, DC, and London; the World Affairs Councils of San Antonio, Texas and Brattleboro, Vermont, the annual meeting of the Governors General of the Caribbean as well as in Parliament House, Canberra and in the House of Commons. Awards for his writing and speaking include three George Washington Honor Medals from the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge. He is a keen sportsman, having played football and ice hockey until he was sixty and is now playing veteran tennis and is in the Devon 75-year-old team.

Jeremy MacNealy

Business writer and candidate for Juris Doctor, Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University

Jeremy MacNealy, from Columbus, OH, completed his undergraduate studies in biblical literature, humanities and sociology from Milligan College in Tennessee in 1998.   He was a business writer and investment analyst with The Motley Fool from 2004 - 07, contributing roughly 500 investment and corporate finance articles, and then earned an Master of Divinity degree in social ethics from Princeton Theological Seminary in 2006. In the summer of 2006, he studied in Switzerland as a Caux Scholar. Following that he completed a Master of Theology with joint studies in law and ethics at the Duke University Law and Divinity Schools, writing his thesis in corporate responsibility and sustainability. He has completed two years of studies for a Juris Doctor degree at Ohio State's Moritz College of Law, where he is in the Moritz Leadership Program. In 2008, he studied comparative law at the University of Oxford. He will be a Law Clerk with the US Department of Justice - US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Ohio this summer, where he will be working on corporate fraud cases.

D. Paul Monteiro

White House Office of Public Engagement

D. Paul Monteiro, a lawyer and former Senate staffer, was appointed by President Obama to serve as religious liaison in its Office of Public Liaison & Intergovernmental Affairs (OPL-IGA). Monteiro, a '07 graduate of Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C., helped coordinate faith outreach across Illinois while working in the nation's capital for then Senator Obama. In early '07, Monteiro joined fellow Senate staffers in Chicago to work on the presidential campaign "Obama for America" of the Democratic National Committee, as National deputy director of religious affairs, later helping to organize the inaugural national prayer service. At his new post, Monteiro schedules events and meetings with representatives from various organizations and denominations, whose concerns he passes on to the appropriate office or agency. Monteiro also serves as youth liaison in the Office of Public Liaison.

Amy C. Potter

Associate Director, Practice Institute, Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, Eastern Mennonite University

Amy Potter works for the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding as Associate Director of the Practice and Training Institute and Director of Coming to the Table, a program that addresses the intergenerational transmission of trauma from slavery and its legacy. Amy is an experienced mediator, facilitator and trainer. Before coming to CJP, she worked at the Iowa Peace Institute conducting mediation and conflict resolution training. She was the coordinator of University Accord, a campus-wide program at EMU that provides mediation, facilitation and restorative justice services. She holds a B.A. from Principia College and a master’s degree in conflict transformation from Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

Krish Raval

CEO, Learn to Lead and Director, Faith in Leadership

Krish Raval is Chief Executive of Learn to Lead, an organization that develops the personal potential of people of all ages. His company runs programs for corporations and educational institutions around the world and has recently launched Faith in Leadership, a course for rising stars within the different faith traditions in Britain which has as its Patrons the main faith leaders in the UK including the Archbishop of Canterbury (www.faithinleadership.org). Krish Raval was born in Ethiopia of Indian parents and was raised in the UK. He was educated at the Universities of Cambridge and Sheffield. He is Senior Fellow at the James MacGregor Burns Academy for Leadership at the University of Maryland Krish has served on the Board of Directors of Initiatives of Change (USA) since 2008.

Dr. Syngman Rhee

Past President, National Council of Churches, USA

Dr. Syngman Rhee is Professor of Intercultural Studies and Director, Asian American Ministry and Mission Center at Union-PSCE, in Richmond, Virginia. He is the International Chairman of the Institute for Strategic Reconciliation and recently served as the first Asian moderator of the Presbyterian Churches, USA. Syngman Rhee was born and raised in Pyong Yang, the Capital of North Korea. Throughout his life, Rhee has been deeply involved with issues of justice, reconciliation and peace. He was ordained by Louisville Presbytery in 1960. He was campus minister at University of Louisville where he served as the first faculty advisor to the Black Student Union, and joined the Civil Rights Movement. He has made more than 20 trips to the two Koreas since his first trip to North Korea in 1978 to help reconciliation in the Korean peninsula.

Dr. Harold H. Saunders

Director of International Affairs at the Kettering Foundation

Dr. Harold Saunders is one of the world’s most respected and knowledgeable diplomats concerning middle-eastern affairs. For over a decade (from 1961 to 1974), Dr. Saunders served as a resource to three presidents as a member of the National Security Council senior staff. Soon after becoming Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs in the Carter Administration, Dr. Saunders had the opportunity to participate in the Camp David Accord, by all accounts a land-mark achievement in peace for the Middle East. Dr. Saunders is the architect of Sustained Dialogue, “a public peace process” designed to change relationships among those in deep-rooted human conflicts. As chairman and president of the International Institute for Sustained Dialogue (IISD), he conducted peace-making and peace-building dialogues during and following the civil war in Tajikistan, 1993-2007, as well as a three-year dialogue to improve relationships between the Muslim Arab heartland and the West. IISD continues to transfer Sustained Dialogue to the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, and is the institutional base for the Sustained Dialogue Campus Network, now operating on some 16 high schools and college campuses.

Thomas A. Silvestri

President and Publisher, Richmond Times-Dispatch

In January 2005, Tom Silvestri became president and publisher of The Richmond Times-Dispatch, Media General Inc.'s second largest newspaper that also oversees a chain of suburban weeklies. A journalist for more than 25 years, Tom is a former deputy managing editor of the newspaper, where he helped create three news departments and several stand-alone sections, and launched a training program that attracted national attention for its breadth and reality-based approach. Before taking on his current position he was president of Media General's community newspapers, responsible for 20 daily newspapers, more than 25 weeklies in five Southeastern states, and Media General's statewide business magazine. Tom received a BA from Pace University and a Master’s in Business Administration from Virginia Commonwealth University. He is a frequent discussion leader for the American Press Institute, where he is on the board of directors, and other journalism organizations. He is on the executive committee of the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce and is a board member of the World Affairs Council. He is a graduate of Leadership Metro Richmond and this year will become chairman of the regional group. Silvestri has initiated and facilitated more than twenty Public Square dialogues, sponsored by the newspaper, on such issues as affordable housing, immigration, and public education.