Berkley Center

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.

Eric LeCompte is the executive director of Jubilee USA Network, a development coalition of more than 750 religious groups and organizations. For more than 25 years, he has led religious groups to win policies that alleviate poverty, address global conflict, and promote human rights.

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. 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.

Adam Phillips is the director of USAID’s Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and USAID’s Local, Faith, and Transformative Partnerships Hub, which strengthens USAID’s ability to partner with nontraditional and diverse actors.