Berkley Center

Stanley Carlson-Thies is the founder and senior director of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance (IRFA), a division of the Center for Public Justice. Carlson-Thies is also a senior fellow at the Canadian think tank Cardus. From 2009-2010 he served on a task force of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and he also served with the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives from its inception in February 2001 until mid-May 2002 under President George W. Bush.

Shaun Casey is a senior fellow with the Luce Project on Religion and Its Publics at the University of Virginia and a Pulaski Institution non-resident fellow. He served as director of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and professor of the practice in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University from 2017 to 2021. He previously was U.S. special representative for religion and global affairs and director of the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs. He has also served as professor of Christian ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC, and held positions at the Center for American Progress and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Casey has written on the ethics of the war in Iraq, as well the role of religion in American presidential politics. He is the author of The Making of a Catholic President: Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960 (2009) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Political Theology (forthcoming, with Michael Kessler); he is writing a book on ethics and international politics tentatively titled Niebuhr’s Children. Casey holds a B.A. from Abilene Christian University, MPA from Harvard Kennedy School, and M.Div. and Th.D. in religion and society from Harvard Divinity School.

Sabrina Dent, DMin, is the senior faith adviser at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Previously, Sabrina worked as director of recruitment and admissions at the Religious Freedom Center of the Freedom Forum where she managed several of the education initiatives designed for religious and civic leaders.

Joshua DuBois is CEO of Gauge, a market research company, and also leads Values Partnerships, one of the country’s top social impact agencies. Previously, he was an aide to then Senator Barack Obama and went on to act as religious affairs director for Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. In February 2009, President Obama appointed him to lead the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships where he served until 2013. DuBois is a Pentecostal minister.

David Saperstein was the U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom from January 2015 to January 2017. He is currently is an adjunct professor with the Center for Jewish Civilization in the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and previously was a senior research fellow of the Religious Freedom Research Project at the Berkley Center. An ordained rabbi, he served for several decades as the director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism representing the public policy positions of the Reform Jewish Movement, the largest segment of American Jewry, to the government and leading the movement’s efforts to strengthen social justice programming in synagogues across North America. Over the years, he headed several national religious coalitions, including co-chairing the Coalition to Preserve Religious Liberty, and served on various national boards, among them the NAACP, People for the American Way, and the World Faiths Development Dialogue. In 1999 and 2000, Saperstein served as the first chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. He was a crucial part of the faith-based movement that supported passage of the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act. A frequent media commentator on religion and public life, Saperstein is also an attorney and taught, for over 30 years, seminars on First Amendment law and Jewish law at Georgetown University Law Center.

Maggie Siddiqi is the director of the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress. Her role is focused on advancing a progressive vision of religious liberty and engaging a network of religious leaders across multiple areas of public policy. Siddiqi is an interfaith strategist and advocate for progressive causes and is certified as a Muslim chaplain.