Berkley Center

Emre Celik is the president and CEO of the Rumi Forum, where he has worked since 2009. He is also a columnist for the Huffington Post. His work focuses on intercultural dialogue issues related to pluralism, social harmony, and peacebuilding. Celik is originally from Australia, where he was involved in numerous interfaith and education projects in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. He has a degree in Computer Engineering and a master's degree in Teaching.

Catherine Cosman is a Senior Policy Analyst with the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, where she has worked since November 2003 covering Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union. She served a senior analyst with the US Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe from 1976-89. She then joined Human Rights Watch (1989-92), focusing on ethnic conflicts and human rights. While at the Free Trade Union Institute (1992-96), she focused on emerging independent labor unions in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. From 1996-98 she was the Senior Expert of the OSCE Mission, working on Russian minority integration into Estonian society. She managed the Central Asian and Caucasus grants program at the National Endowment for Democracy, before joining the Communications Division at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in 1999 as a program editor. She received a BA from Grinnell College and a MA and an ABD from Brown University.

Joshua Foust is a fellow at The American Security Project, where he studies national security strategy and post-conflict reconstruction. He is also editor of Registan.net, which is devoted to Central Asia, and is a columnist for PBS "Need to Know." His writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Reuters, and the Columbian Journalism Review.

Mehmet Kalyoncu is an independent political analyst. He has published articles in academic journals and op-ed pieces in newspapers and online publications. His writing has appeared in Foreign Policy Magazine, Balkanalysis, Caspian Business News, Zaman US Daily, Today’s Zaman, Zinda Magazine, PINR, American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, Journal of Central Asia and the Caucasus, and Centro Argentino de Estudios Internacionales. His research interests include Turkish foreign policy, ethno-religious politics, civil society, and social development in countries rich in natural resources. Kalyoncu authored A Civilian Response to Ethno-Religious Conflict: Gulen Movement in Southeast Turkey (The Light, 2008). He holds a M.S. in Management & Administrative Sciences from University of Texas at Dallas and a M.A. in Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies from Georgetown University.

Jonathan Landay is a reporter for Reuters covering national security. He previously worked for McClatchy/Knight-Ridder, the Christian Science Monitor, and United Press International. Landay partnered with Warren Strobel on a series of stories skeptical of the George W. Bush administration's claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as justification for war; they received the Raymond Clapper Memorial award from the Senate Press Gallery for their work. Landay, Marisa Taylor, and Ali Watkins were 2015 Pulitzer Prize finalists for their work on the Senate Intelligence Committee's report regarding the CIA's torture programs. 

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.

Dr. Mohamed Nimer is an assistant professor in American University's School of Professional and Extended Studies in Washington, DC, where he teaches the Washington Semester Islam and World Affairs Program. His research and teaching interests include religion and politics, cross cultural communication, Muslims in the West, and contemporary Islamic thought. He has also taught courses on Islamic reform movements at the International Institute of Islamic Thought. His publications include The North American Muslim Resource Guide: Muslim Community Life in the United States and Canada (2002) and the edited volume Islamophobia and Anti-Americanism: Causes and Remedies (2007). He is also the author of "Americanizing Islamists" (The American Interest, 2011) and "The Muslim Brotherhood in the United States: Citizens with Foreign Attachments?" (Middle East Policy, 2010).

Marina Ottaway works on issues of political transformation in the Middle East and Gulf security. A long-time analyst of the formation and transformation of political systems, she has also written on political reconstruction in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, and African countries. Before joining the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Ottaway carried out research in Africa and in the Middle East for many years and taught at the University of Addis Ababa, the University of Zambia, the American University in Cairo, and the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. Ottaway is an expert in civil society, democracy, political reform, non-governmental actors, foreign and humanitarian aid, human rights, Islamist movements, the Middle East, Iraq, and Africa. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University and undergraduate degree from the University of Pavia, Italy.