Berkley Center

Salma Abugideiri is a relationship columnist for altMuslimah, an online portal showcasing stories and commentary on gender in Islam. She is also a founding board member of the Peaceful Families Project, a non-profit organization that educates members of the Muslim community about domestic violence and the ways to end it. Abugideiri is a contributing author in several works, including Walking Together: Working with Women from Diverse Religious Traditions (2005). She received her master’s degree in counseling from George Mason University and serves as a licensed professional counselor at a private practice in Virginia.

Shahed Amanullah served as a senior advisor at the U.S. Department of State from 2011 to 2014, with a focus on global Muslim communities. He is also a founding board member of the Muslim Public Service Network, which trains Muslims seeking careers in Washington, DC. Amanullah currently serves as a global vice president at the research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan and managing director of the private equity firm Frost Capital.

Crystal Corman was the program manager at WFDD from November 2013 through September 2016. Prior to joining WFDD, Corman consulted at the World Bank on issues related to fragility, violence prevention, and gender. In 2010 she was a Boren Fellow in Malaysia, where she researched Muslim women’s agency within Islam. She also served as a volunteer English teacher in Thailand from 2003 to 2004 through the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s young adult in global mission program. Before graduate school, Corman worked in campus ministry for the Lutheran Student Center from 2005 to 2008 at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She is interested in working with religious leaders and communities on development issues related to gender equality, women’s agency, and peacebuilding. Corman holds a B.J. in advertising from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, an M.A. in international peace and conflict resolution from American University, and an M.T.S. from Wesley Theological Seminary.

Jamillah Karim is an award-winning author, lecturer, and blogger. Karim specializes in race, gender, and Islam in America. Her most recent academic appointment was as associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Spelman College, where she taught courses on the study of Islam for six years. In 2010 Karim traveled with her family to Malaysia, where she began her blog Race+Gender+Faith. She is the author of Women of the Nation: Between Black Protest and Sunni Islam (2014, with Dawn Marie-Gibson), which explores women’s experiences and contributions in the Nation of Islam, and American Muslim Women: Negotiating Race, Class, and Gender within the Ummah (2008). She occasionally contributes articles on spirituality for Azizah magazine. She was recently highlighted as a young faith leader in the black community by JET magazine. Karim holds a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from Duke University.

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.

Ashley E. McGuire is the editor of AltCatholicah, a senior fellow with the Catholic Association, a staff writer for Acculturated, and an editor of the Institute for Family Studies blog. Her writing has appeared in a range of outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, TIME, and USA Today, among others, and she has appeared on nearly every major television network discussing faith, gender, and religious liberty. McGuire is a graduate of Tufts University.

Susan Katz Miller is an author and a former Newsweek reporter. Her book Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family (2013) chronicles the grassroots movement of interfaith families choosing to educate children about both family religions. Being Both is based on ten years of research, original surveys, and interviews with parents, grown children, clergy, and interfaith educators. Miller's October 2013 op-ed for the New York Times on raising children with both religions received more than 600 comments. Her work has also been featured in NPR's All Things Considered, Diane Rehm Show, Time, Utne Reader, Slate, Salon, Jewish Daily Forward, and many other media outlets. Miller blogs on interfaith families and complex religious identity at Huffington Post and at OnBeingBoth.com. She is a former co-chair of the Board of the Interfaith Families Project of Greater Washington DC.

Neylan McBaine is an author and brand strategist for Bonneville Communications. A life-long member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), she is the founder of The Mormon Women Project, a digital library of over 200 interviews with LDS women from around the globe. Her books include Women at Church: Magnifying LDS Women’s Local Impact (2014), How To Be A Twenty-First Century Pioneer Woman (2008) and Sisters Abroad: Interviews from the Mormon Women Project (2013, ed. with Sylvia a. Allred). McBaine's writing has appeared in Newsweek, the Washington Post's "On Faith" religion blog, and Meridian Magazine, among others. She attended Yale University.