Berkley Center

Vinya Ariyaratne, M.D., is president of the Sri Lankan Sarvodaya Shramadana Sangamaya, an NGO founded by his father in 1958 and inspired by Buddhist principles. He was also founding chairman of Deshodaya Development Finance Company (DDCC), Sarvodaya’s microfinance arm. Ariyaratne has been a visiting fellow at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, and Brandeis University. He is currently involved in conflict resolution and peacebuilding, acting as lead facilitator for the One Text Initiative and as a member of the Council of the Arigatou Foundation’s Global Network for Children. He holds a doctorate in medicine from De La Salle University in the Philippines, a doctorate in community medicine from the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine of the University of Colombo, and a master's degree in public health from Johns Hopkins 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.