Berkley Center

Nancy Chan is the founder of the Idea Catalyst, which provides Christian social entrepreneurs in Washington, DC access to a community of advisors to help bring their ideas to life. She is an associate director at Arabella Advisors, a philanthropy consulting firm, where she advises foundation clients on strategy development and evaluation. Chan was previously a policy analyst at SRI International and has worked as a research associate at the Urban Institute’s Education Policy Center and at several Silicon Valley high-tech companies. She has also worked in faith communities, including as a campus minister at Georgetown University. She helped start Little Lights Urban Ministries, an urban youth organization in southeast DC, and served on their board of directors. Chan holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from MIT and an M.P.P. from the Georgetown McCourt School of Public Policy, where she founded the Forum on Faith and Policy.

Rev. Fletcher Harper is an Episcopal priest and the executive director of GreenFaith. A leader in the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative, he helps spearhead the faith-based fossil fuel divestment movement, organizes faith turnouts at major climate mobilizations, and is a co-founder of Shine, an international campaign that supports women and community-led renewable energy access initiatives in Africa and India. He is the author of GreenFaith: Mobilizing God’s People to Protect the Earth (2015).

An educator, advocate, and activist, Mark works to support students who have previously experienced difficulty in school. The founder and executive director of Reach Incorporated, he unleashes the potential of teens to combat their communities' most significant challenges. At Reach, teens are trained to be elementary school reading tutors and children's book authors, allowing them to better themselves through service to others. Mark is a former DC Social Worker of the Year and a 2011 Echoing Green Fellow.

Katherine Marshall, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, leads the center’s work on religion and global development. She is also a professor of the practice of development, conflict, and religion in the Walsh School of Foreign Service, teaching diverse courses on the ethics of development work and mentoring students at many levels. She helped to create and now serves as the executive director of the World Faiths Development Dialogue, an NGO that works to enhance bridges between different sectors and institutions. In September 2022, she was appointed as a member of the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Marshall has five decades of experience on a variety of development issues in Africa, Latin America, East Asia, and the Middle East, particularly those facing the world’s poorest countries. She was a World Bank officer from 1971 to 2006, and she led the World Bank’s faith and ethics initiative between 2000 and 2006. Marshall is a member of the Working Group on Child Rights and Family Values and the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, both part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Dr. Emad Rahim is an award-winning author, entrepreneur, and educator. He is a genocide survivor of the Cambodian Killing, where he lost his brother and father to the Khmer Rouge. Growing up in poverty and around violence as a refugee in Brooklyn and Syracuse, NY, Rahim overcame great adversity to find his way in higher education, Islam, and entrepreneurship. He was recognized for his social entrepreneurship work at UN headquarters as an Empact100 Honoree and was invited to participate in an entrepreneurship summit hosted by the White House and the U.S. Chambers of Commerce. Rahim’s personal story is told in a short documentary titled Against the Odds and was adapted into the theater production, Tales from the Salt City, written and directed by award-winning playwright Ping Chong. He currently serves an assistant dean of business at Strayer University, entrepreneur-in-residence at Oklahoma State University, and visiting scholar at Rutgers University.

Jeffrey Solomon is the president of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies. A widely recognized expert on philanthropy, he has written more than eighty articles on the subject for professional and popular audiences and has taught it at New York University. Solomon has served on numerous nonprofit boards, including the Council on Foundations, where he chaired the Committee on Ethics and Practice; been chief operating officer of the United Jewish Appeal Federation in New York; and is a founding trustee of World Faiths Development Dialogue. He coordinated the Gift of New York, an effort to ease the suffering of the families of those killed in the attack on the World Trade Center by offering them free access to the city's cultural, sports, and entertainment resources. He and Charles Bronfman have written The Art of Giving: Where the Soul Meets A Business Plan (2009) and The Art of Doing Good: Where Passion Meets Action (2012).

Afeefa Syeed is a cultural anthropologist who served as senior advisor at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). She is currently a research associate with the Cambridge Institute on Religion and Global Affairs, senior fellow at the Institute for Global Engagement, and advisory council member at the Center for Women, Faith and Leadership. Her work includes religion and development, gender inclusion, countering extremism, and integrating cultural context into development and diplomacy.