Azza Karam is a member of the United Nations’ Secretary General High Level Advisory Board on Multilateralism and president and CEO of Lead Integrity. She is secretary general emerita of Religions for Peace International and previously was a professor of religion and development at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. She served for nearly two decades in the United Nations (in UNDP and UNFPA), where she coordinated the Arab Human Development Reports, co-founded and chaired the United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on Religion (with over 20 UN system bodies), and founded and convened its Multi-Faith Advisory Council. Karam created and facilitated the peer-to-peer “Strategic Learning Exchanges” on religion, development, and diplomacy. Karam is a member of the Working Group on Child Rights and Family Values, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

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.

Since 1961, Ray Martin has a long career working on development in different sectors. His half century as an international development and public health specialist includes 25 years with USAID as chief of the Health, Population, and Nutrition offices in Zaire, Pakistan, and Cameroon, plus tours in Ghana and Morocco, followed by several years as a public health specialist on Africa programs at the World Bank. He served as the executive director of Christian Connections for International Health, a large network of organizations and individuals working in global health for 14 years. As a retiree, his current focus is on climate change and environmental justice issues and he is active in several professional associations. He was selected for the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Health Section of the American Public Health Association. In 2017, he received the Alumni of the Year International award from the USAID Alumni Association for his activism and achievements after retiring from USAID. His career began as a Mennonite volunteer in community development in Somalia and in refugee development in Tanzania. Martin received his B.A. in economics from Goshen College, completed coursework for an MA in economics from Vanderbilt University, and received a Master’s in Public Health from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

Karen Sichinga is the executive director of the Churches Health Association of Zambia (CHAZ), a network of 151 church hospitals and clinics delivering health services nationwide, particularly in the rural and hard-to-reach areas of Zambia. Sichinga is also the current chairperson of the Africa Christian Health Associations Platform, a network of 21 Christian Health Associations in Africa. Sichinga is a graduate of the University of Alberta, Canada and University of Leeds (England). She holds a masters degree in international public health and has spent the last 22 years in the field of public health, and has also contributed to a number of public health-related studies and publications. Her areas of expertise and competencies include: project design and implementation; monitoring and evaluation, resource mobilization, and managing multiple large grants. Sichinga sits on both national and international health-related boards including the Nairobi-based Ecumenical Pharmaceutical Network.