Berkley Center

Johan Bjurman Bergman is a student in the Walsh School’s Master of Science in Foreign Service program. A Swedish national, Johan has lived and worked on impact startups and and anti-poverty projects across the United Kingdom, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, UAE, Turkey, Rwanda, and more. He is currently supporting a track-II dialogue on Afghanistan at the Atlantic Council and is also affiliated with the World Economic Forum.

Sophia Farion is a first-year student in the Walsh School’s Master of Science in Foreign Service program and co-president of Georgetown Women in International Affairs. Before coming to Georgetown, Sophia was awarded a Fulbright grant to teach English at a university in western Ukraine from 2017-2018. She has also spent a summer interning at the State Department’s Office of Eastern European Affairs.

Rev. Ebony Grisom is interim director of Protestant Christian Ministry at Georgetown University. Prior to joining Georgetown University, Rev. Grisom served in a faith-based anti-poverty non-profit and two Baptist churches. She is the co-convener of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA’s Convening Table on Joint Action and Advocacy for Justice and Peace.

Kirsten Laursen Muth is chief executive officer of the Joint Learning Initiative on Faith & Local Communities. Her previous positions include: special advisor for leadership development and senior director for international programs at Episcopal Relief & Development and deputy director of programs at Church World Service. She has collaborated with multiple UN agencies and has worked with government, non-profit, education, and faith organizations in more than 40 countries. In recent years, she has focused on gender-based violence prevention and response of faith actors, with a special interest in women's movements.

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.

Sarah Thompson was a Project Manager for Bangladesh at WFDD from 2020 to May 2022. She has a bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Gender Studies from Roanoke College and a master’s degree in International Development with Migration from the University of Kent's Brussels School of International Studies. Prior to joining the WFDD team, Sarah worked in the education and NGO space in both China and Cambodia and recently at Georgetown’s Institute for Reproductive Health focusing on family planning interventions in Nepal. Sarah has a strong interest in the intersection of religion, development, and gender equity in South Asia.