Berkley Center

Brother Oscar Azmitia is a Guatemalan member of the Brothers of the Christian Schools (De La Salle Christian Brothers) and currently serves as the Rector of La Salle University in San José de Costa Rica, where he teaches philosophy, psychology, and pedagogy. He has worked as a teacher in educational centers at both middle and superior levels. From 1989-2004 he was the founding director of the School for Advanced Studies and Rural Development (Spanish acronym: ESEDIR), an institute that offers training to rural Mayan teachers, and of the Santiago Development Project, an organization supporting the development of Mayan culture. He is ALOP’s Regional Secretary for Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean.

Alejandro Bilbao is a Jesuit and the founding director of Centro Magis, an independent nonprofit organization that works throughout Latin America to promote sustainable development by strengthening Jesuit-led universities, schools, and social service organizations. Bilbao has worked extensively in Latin America and Spain with Fe y Alegria, a massive Jesuit-run educational and social movement that includes 1,000 schools in 14 countries. His work has involved education projects, development projects of the ecclesial base communities, and collaboration with union organizations.

Carol Lancaster was the dean emerita of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a professor of politics at the time of her death in October 2014. She wrote on the politics of foreign aid, the politics of development, and development in Africa.

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; one way she shares her expertise is through her blog Faith in Action. 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.

Alfredo Mora is the director of Colegio Monterrey, a non-profit Christian school in Costa Rica. He previously was regional director for Viva Latin America and a member of the National Council for Children and Adolescents in Costa Rica, which helped create the National Code for Children and Adolescents. He has also been the president of the National Organization of Private Institutions that take care of Children (UNIPRIN), a networking organization for Christian and secular organizations that focus on children, and served as a representative of the Technical Secretariat of the Latin American Evangelical Dialogue Forum (FIDE), which includes the presidents of the various national evangelical alliances of Latin America. As such, Mora is FIDE's representative before the World Leadership Committee of the World Evangelical Alliance and the World Christian Forum. He has an MBA and an M.Sc. in political science.

Dr. Zilda Arns Neumann was the founder and president of Pastoral da Criança, a Brazilian Catholic child development and family support organization. She was also the founder and national coordinator of the Senior Citizens’ Pastoral of the National Bishops’ Conference of Brazil and served as a member of the country's National Health Council and National Council for Social and Economic Development. For her work on social issues, Neumann received numerous awards, including the 2007 Woodrow Wilson Award, 2006 Opus Award, 2002 Public Health Heroine of the Americas Award, 1988 Brazilian Person of the Year on Work for Children’s Health, and the 1997 Lions Club International Humanitarian Prize. She died in the January 2010 Haiti earthquake.

A professor and researcher at Rafael Landivar University of Guatemala, Ana Victoria Peláez Ponce has been coordinator of the Guatemalan Interreligious Dialogue for Development and moderator of the Women Mesoamerican Network of the World Conference of Religions for Peace. She also helped launch the Latin American Network of Women for Peace. Peláez has carried out social research mainly on themes related to gender, public policy, socioeconomic development, and migration, both institutionally and independently.

An ophthalmologist by training, Dr. Juan Carlos Silva has worked since 1991 as the visual health regional advisor for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the regional office of the World Health Organization (WHO). Silva devotes most of his time to program analysis, and he works closely with country teams in planning and program development. In 2007, Silva was appointed as the WHO-PAHO liaison for work with the Roman Catholic Church in Colombia. In 2002 he received a graduate certificate in public health in the community health promotion and education track and a MPH at Johns Hopkins University in 2004.