Berkley Center

John L. Esposito is a University Professor, professor of religion and international affairs, professor of Islamic studies, and the founding director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. He served as president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America and the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies; he is currently a member of the High Level Group of the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations, a body of 20 international leaders that guides the alliance's work. He has written over 30 books, including Islamophobia: The Challenges of Pluralism in the 21st Century (2011, with Ibrahim Kalin), Who Speaks for Islam? (2007, with Dalia Mogahed), Islam: The Straight Path (2004), and Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam (2002). Esposito received the American Academy of Religion’s 2005 Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion.

Shamil Idriss is president and CEO at Search for a Common Ground, a peacebuilding organization. Previously, he has been deputy director of the Alliance Secretariat of the international Alliance of Civilizations and served on the Secretariat of the World Economic Forum’s Council of 100 Leaders.

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.