Mary Evelyn Tucker

Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim are the Directors of the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale. Over the last twenty years, the Forum on Religion and Ecology has been drawing together the research and insights of scholars, theologians, and laity within the world’s religions. They have identified ideas, ethics, and practices regarding ecology and justice from these traditions in books, journals, and films. Now there are environmental statements from the world’s religions, educational programs, and grassroots projects on the ground. 

Tucker is a Senior Lecturer and Research Scholar at Yale University where she has appointments in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies as well as the Divinity School and the Department of Religious Studies.  

Her concern for the growing environmental crisis, especially in Asia, led her to organize with John Grim a series of ten conferences on World Religions and Ecology at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard (1995-1998). Together they are series editors for the ten volumes from the conferences distributed by Harvard University Press. In this series she co-edited Buddhism and Ecology (Harvard, 1997), Confucianism and Ecology (Harvard, 1998), and Hinduism and Ecology (Harvard, 2000).

Tucker has been involved with the Earth Charter since its inception. She served on the International Earth Charter Drafting Committee from 1997-2000 and was a member of the Earth Charter International Council. She also serves on the Advisory Boards of Orion Magazine, the Garrison Institute, and Green Belt Movement U.S.

Grim teaches courses in Native American and Indigenous religions and World religions and ecology. He has undertaken field work with the Crow/Apsaalooke people of Montana and Salish people of Washington state. He is the author of The Shaman: Patterns of Religious Healing Among the Ojibway Indians (University of Oklahoma Press, 1983) and edited Indigenous Traditions and Ecology: The Interbeing of Cosmology and Community (Harvard, 2001). Grim is co-executive producer of the Emmy award winning film, Journey of the Universe. This film is the center piece of massive open online courses (MOOCs) offered by Yale/Coursera.
 

Lynda Trono

Lynda Trono is a diaconal minister in the United Church of Canada. She became involved in interfaith work after her son Joel converted to Islam in 2007 and started to experience discrimination. She joined the Manitoba Multifaith Council and chaired their Education Committee for six years. During that time she found that building relationship with people of other faiths was just as important as learning about their faiths. Friendship is key. Lynda attended her first NAIN Connect in 2008. She currently serves as the NAIN Program Convenor. Lynda’s day-job involves working with people that live in poverty in Winnipeg’s inner city. She is passionate about working for social change.

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Lynda Trono tiene calidad de ministra de la Iglesia Unida de Canadá, pero sin haber sido ordenada para celebrar misa. Ella se integró al trabajo de inter-fe después que su hijo Joel se convirtió al Islamismo en 2007 y comenzó a experimentar discriminación. Ella se unió al Consejo de Multife de Manitoba y presidió el Comité de Educación por 6 años. Durante ese tiempo ella descubrió que desarrollar relaciones con gente de otra fe era tan importante como saber de su fe. Amistad es la clave. Lynda asistió a su primera conexión NAIN en 2008. Ella en la actualidad sirve como Organizadora de Programas NAIN. El trabajo diario de Lynda envuelve asistir a gente que vive en pobreza en la ciudad de Winnipeg. Ella es apasionada de trabajar por el cambio social.

Michael Reid Trice

Michael Reid Trice is the assistant dean for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue at the Seattle University School of Theology and Ministry. From 2004 to 2011, Michael served as associate executive officer for the Office of Ecumenical and Inter-Religious Relations in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Michael earned a M.T.S. magna cum laude from Duke Divinity School and a Th.M. summa cum laude from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. In 2006, Michael completed his dissertation with High Honors at Loyola University in Chicago, in an ecumenical studies program with the Evangelische Fakultät at Ludwig-Maximillian-University in Munich, Germany. His dissertation, titled Encountering Cruelty: A Fracture of the Human Heart, won the 2007 distinguished best original dissertation award for Loyola Jesuit University, and was published in April, 2011.

Michael served for two years as ELCA staff for the White House Task Force on Interreligious Dialogue and Cooperation, is a leader on the Interfaith Commission of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, and stands on the executive board for Church World Service. He has likewise facilitated and taught courses of study in Geneva, Switzerland on global trends in Christian and interreligious relations. Michael’s areas of academic interest include multireligious relations and trends, and the intersections in applied theology to conflict transformation, through and after the trespasses of human violence and cruelty.

Yoland Trevino

Yoland Trevino, an indigenous Mayan woman from Guatemala, serves as chair of United Religions Initiative’s Global Council and as regional coordinator for Latin America. With graduate degrees in human behavior and psychology, Yoland is a visionary educator and trainer who focuses on issues related to personal and organizational change. In 1996, after 25 years working in education, health, psychology, family support, and community development, she founded Transformative Collaborations International (TCI). TCI works domestically and internationally supporting educational efforts to unleash the talents of children, youth, and families. TCI has done extensive organizational development work and continues to explore “the art of the possible” utilizing holistic human development, collaborative leadership, and organizational effectiveness. In addition to her work with URI, Ms. Trevino has consulted and designed events for the 2004 Parliament of the World Religions in Barcelona, Spain, as well as a youth track for the 1999 Parliament in Cape Town, South Africa.

Judy Lee Trautman

Judy Lee Trautman is co-founder and co-chair of the MultiFaith Council of NW Ohio and chairs the local Erase the Hate Coalition. Currently the MultiFaith Council is seeking an official designation for Greater Toledo as a Compassionate Community in the Compassionate Cities Campaign. Another major outreach is MultiFaith GROWs, which encourages using faith space for community gardens. Judy is a trustee of the North American Interfaith Network, chairing its Communications Committee. She is an initiate and ordained Cherag of the Sufi Ruhaniat International, as well as a member of First Unitarian Church in Toledo. She is a certified leader of the Dances of Universal Peace, an important spiritual practice for her.

Robert Toth

Robert Toth served as executive director of the Merton Institute for Contemplative Living in Louisville, Kentucky from 1998 to 2010. He is currently engaged in several projects related to advancing the contemplative movement and improving the human condition. These include The Contemplative Alliance, the American Education Think Tank, and the National Leadership Congress. He is the co-editor of Bridges to Contemplative Living (2010), a popular series designed for small group dialogue.

He received his A.B in Classics and M.A. in Education from John Carroll University. He taught English in secondary schools for six years and worked in healthcare administration for twenty-two years before joining the Merton Institute.

Nichola Torbett

Nichola Torbett is the director of Seminary of the Street, a spiritual formation institute fostering communities of recovery and resistance. She previously served as the Director of National Programs for the Network of Spiritual Progressives, an interfaith organization working on the intersection of love, meaning, and politics. Before laying down her corporate fishing rod to follow the NSP to California, she worked as a professional writer and editor in Minnesota and got her political start as Minnesota State Co-Coordinator for Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign. The latter experience convinced her that powerful transformations are possible when activists actually embody, in community, the alternative values they are fighting for.

With degrees from the University of Toledo and Indiana University at Bloomington, Nichola has read widely in cultural studies, theology, social theory, and psychology, but has been most radically shaped by engagement with people who were willing to be real with her.

Mimi Tohill

Miriam (Mimi) K. Tohill (she/her) builds communities of care as a member of Jewish communities in NYC, as a participant in the Flux Factory '19-'20 Residency, and through her day job managing engagement projects for intergenerational LGBTQ communities nationwide. She graduated from Franklin University, Switzerland in 2013 with a BA in History and Comparative Studies.

Rebecca Tobias

Rebecca Tobias is a Global Council trustee of the United Religions Initiative and program director of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Ethics, designing and facilitating interfaith and intercultural programs promoting a culture of peace. Her degrees come from the University of London and Florida International University, and she has attended the Elijah Interfaith Institute in Jerusalem. Rebecca has coordinated capacity-building projects with civic, faith, and social justice advocacy organizations locally, nationally and internationally. As a fellow with the United Nations Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights for the Working Groups for Indigenous Populations, Rebecca assisted in drafting resolutions and served as a UN delegate to the Tripartite Forum on Interfaith Cooperation for Peace. She is particularly active in peacebuilding activities in the Middle East and among indigenous communities, and lectures widely on ethics and intercultural cooperation. 

Theodore Timpson

Theodore Timpson is the founder and president of Young Spirit Foundation, advocating for schools that create space for wisdom and connection in young people's lives. The foundation has sponsored the development of Communitas Charter High School in Silicon Valley, a unique program where students will learn through integrative studies, self-reflection, and relationships with the community. Theodore has taught for many years at the elementary level, developed a concept-based math program, and directed several children's theater productions. He has facilitated workshops at a number of national conferences and local organizations. Theodore has a B.A. in English from Harvard University and a M.S. in Education from Bank Street College in New York City, an institution recognized by the Carnegie Foundation for its pioneering work with children. Theodore enjoys getting smiles and giggles from his two children in Mountain View, California.

Edouard Tétreau

Edouard Tétreau is a French economist specializing in the anticipation and management of financial crises, which he has taught at the leading French business school HEC Paris. As a sell-side financial analyst in the previous decade, he was credited for having predicted the internet stock market crash in Europe(March 16, 2000 Credit Lyonnais Securities note, “take your e-profits before a potential e-crash”), and Jean-Marie Messier’s Vivendi Universal disaster (March 2002).

His first three books, the latest of which was published in China, described the excesses and sheer “madness” (folie financière) of the financial sphere with a particular angle on Wall Street, where he worked for a major financial institution (US$600 billion of assets under management) during the latest 2008 crisis. In the United States, Edouard serves as a trustee of the Washington, D.C.-based think tank, Committee for Economic Development (CED) and a member of the Advisory Board of La Maison Française at Columbia University.

His book, The Rising Tide, (in French, Quand tombera le mur de l’argent) (2015) is based on “Pope Francis economics” and Tétreau’s 2014 briefing to the Vatican about the inherent difficulties in the world’s economy.

Max Tegmark

Max Tegmark is a professor of physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, focused on astrophysics and cosmology. A native of Sweden, he did his graduate work at University of California, Berkeley. Subsequently he worked at the Max-Planck-Institut für Physik in Munich and, as a Hubble Fellow, was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He taught at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was tenured in 2003. In 2004 he joined the MIT faculty. His work in “precision cosmology,” combining theoretical work with new measurements to place sharp constraints on cosmological models and their free parameters, has been honored. In 2003 he shared the first prize in Science magazine’s “Breakthrough of the Year” award. He is widely published, not just in academic journals but in Scientific American, BBC, Science, and Huffington Post.

Pamela Taylor

Pamela Taylor, an On Faith panelist, has been an active member of the American Muslim community for 25 years. She is co-founder and member of the Advisory Board of Muslims for Progressive Values. She has served as Director and Publications officer of the Islamic Writers Alliance, and has worked for The Islamic Media Foundation and the Islamic Society of North America. She is a strong supporter of gender equality in the Muslim world, and as a proponent of the woman-led prayer movement has served as imam on various occasions. With a Masters of Theology from Harvard Divinity School, she has written extensively on Islam, in academic works and the mainstream media as well as the Muslim media. She has lectured at universities and conferences across North America and abroad, including South Africa and Malaysia.

Erin Taylor

Erin Taylor is director of communications at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs, a position she has held since March 2012, and has been special advisor for global engagement at Georgetown since May 2015. She is also pursuing her M.Sc. in the Walsh School of Foreign Service. Previously, Erin served as deputy director of communications at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She has also worked for the British Consulate-General in New York and the German Embassy in Washington. Erin is a graduate of The George Washington University and was an Alexander von Humboldt German Chancellor Scholar in Berlin.

Bron Taylor

Bron Taylor is Professor of Religion and Environmental Ethics at the University of Florida, and a Carson Fellow of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich Germany. His books include Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future (2010), the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (2005), Ecological Resistance Movements: the Global Emergence of Radical and Popular Environmentalism (1995), and Avatar and Nature Spirituality (forthcoming in 2013). He is also the founder of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, and editor of its affiliated Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture. More information, including many downloadable articles and interviews, is available here.

Jesse F. Tanner

Jesse F. Tanner has a Ph.D. in religious studies at the University of the West in Rosemead, California. His personal and academic interests involve religious pluralism, inter-religious dialogue, multiple religious identity, and Buddhist-Christian relations. He has been involved in interfaith work in local communities across the country for several years, maintaining an ongoing dedication to furthering the interfaith movement through teaching, research, writing, and social action. He is also currently a ministerial candidate for ordination in Unity School of Christianity. 

El Hassan bin Talal

His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal was born in Amman to a branch of the Hashemite family directly descended from the Prophet Muhammad, in the forty-second generation of descendants. His Royal Highness is the youngest son of their late Majesties King Talal and Queen Zein El Sharaf, and is the brother of His late Majesty King Hussein, serving him as a close political advisor, confidant, and deputy, as well as acting as regent in the King’s absence from the country.

Prince Hassan had his early schooling in Amman. In 1963, HRH went to Harrow School, then matriculated to Christ Church College, Oxford. Prince Hassan has initiated, founded, and is actively involved in a number of Jordanian and international institutes and committees.

Prince Hassan initiated and hosted ongoing consultations with the Orthodox Centre of the Ecumenical Patriarchate at Chambesy, Switzerland, the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue at the Vatican and The Interfaith Foundation in the United Kingdom through the aegis of the St. George’s House, Windsor. Prince Hassan is a founder and now President of the Foundation for Inter-religious and Intercultural Research and Dialogue (FIIRD), which was established in Geneva in 1999.

Prince Hassan chairs and is a member of a number of international committees and organizations. In November 1999, at the Seventh World Assembly of the World Conference of Religions for Peace (WCRP), held in Amman, Prince Hassan accepted the position of Moderator of the WCRP, until the Eighth World Assembly, in 2006, after which HRH was awarded the title of President Emeritus.

He has written nine books and received more than two dozen honorary degrees.

Najeeba Syeed

Najeeba Syeed is the inaugural El-Hibri Chair and Executive Director of the Interfaith Institute at Augsburg University, USA. She is a professor, expert practitioner, and public speaker in the fields of interfaith studies, mediation, conflict resolution, deliberative democracy, and social, gender, and racial equity.

In 2021, Professor Syeed served as Chief of Staff to the first Asian American woman elected to the Los Angeles City Council. She was Associate Professor of Muslim and Interreligious Studies at Chicago Theological Seminary in 2020. From 2010 to 2020, she held an Associate Professorship in Interreligious Education at Claremont School of Theology.

Under Professor Syeed’s leadership, the two conflict resolution centers received the Jon Anson Ford Award for reducing violence. She was named the Southern California Mediation Association’s “Peacemaker of the Year” in 2007. She was awarded the Fisher Faculty Teaching Award in 2014 for her excellence in teaching. In 2017, she received the Scholar-Activist Award from Auburn Seminary, and in 2020, the Instructor of the Year award.

Professor Syeed co-designed a doctoral program in Interreligious Education and directed dissertations on topics including resilience in interreligious learning, decolonial models for interreligious programs, Christian-Buddhist peacemaking in Southeast Asia, Black Muslim community practical theologies of community development, etc.

Professor Syeed authored a chapter in Asian and Asian American Women in Theology and Religion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), and co-edited Critical Approaches to Interreligious Education (Brill, 2020). Her work has been the subject of news reports and documentaries, such as the NBC film on Waging Peace: Muslim and Christian Alternatives.

Bharti Tailor

Bharti Tailor is the Secretary General of the Hindu Forum of Britain, the first woman to so serve. She was previously Chair of the forum's Chaplaincy committee, and has a career as an equality and diversity consultant. She is the first female to hold such a senior position in any national Hindu organization and one of a very few women in such a prominent post in the faith arena. 

The Hindu Forum of Britain is the largest representative body of British Hindus, with over 275 member organizations across the UK. The forum's activities are broadly divided into three areas: public affairs and community consultation; capacity building and project development; and interfaith co-operation and relations to help build a cohesive and inclusive Britain.

Along with her duties as Secretary General, Bharti also serves as Hindu Chaplain to a Women’s’ Prison.

William Swing

Bishop William Swing is the president and founder of the United Religions Initiative. He had the original vision of URI in 1993 in response to an invitation from the United Nations, which asked him to host an interfaith service honoring the 50th anniversary of the signing of the U.N. Charter. Bishop Swing served as the Episcopal Bishop of California from 1980 until his retirement in 2006. In that capacity, he was a national and international leader in response to the AIDS crisis, co-founded Episcopal Community Services to address San Francisco’s homeless problem, and co-founded Community Bank of the Bay to support local businesses and the economy.

Swing is the author and co-author of several books, including The Coming United Religions (1998), Building Wisdom’s House (1997), and the recipient of many honorary doctoral degrees, including Jesuit-sponsored University of San Francisco. In 2008 Swing had the honor of having the Bishop Swing Community House, a permanent supportive housing for chronically homeless adults in San Francisco’s downtown South of Market (SoMa) district, dedicated to him.