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.
Henry Karlson
Henry Karlson is a Byzantine Catholic who has long had interest in interfaith dialogue and the comparative theology which develops from it. He first became interested in what Christians can learn from other traditions through his engagement with myth via C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. But then in his academic pursuits, he became interested in the philosophical and theological explorations which are also able to be had through study of many faith traditions. While he finds many faith traditions of interest, including Judaism and Islam, his main focus has been on Buddhist-Christian dialogue with a particular interest in Yogācāra Buddhism. Henry Karlson currently works as an independent scholar writing articles on Patheos and working on several books which he hopes to have published.