By: Ruth Gopin Katherine Marshall
February 3, 2025
Ruth was honored to join Katherine at Eva Haller's Salon to discuss their intergenerational partnership of over 15 years and work they have done, both together and independently, to engage young people and amplify their voices. Katherine and Ruth first met when Ruth was a 12-year-old climate activist who had been invited to speak at a conference in Switzerland. Ruth gave an impassioned speech urging climate action and Katherine published her own reflections about the speech to help promote the message. Given these beginnings, it should come as no surprise that subsequent dialogue and projects for these two have centered around amplifying youth voices.
From headlining a powerful youth speaker at the G20 Interfaith Forum in Japan to revitalizing a collection of youth papers on interreligious engagement, a common thread for Katherine and Ruth has been strengthing intergenerational partnerships (including their own) and advocating for the substantive inclusion of young people's voices in global challenges. A key project centered around tracking religious responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the transformative leadership of young women; lessons learned were incorportated into a joint paper for the Religions for Peace report "Youth Engagement with Religion and Faith in the 21st Century." Their conversation at Eva Haller's Salon reflected on these projects and more, as well as questions around who gets chosen to represent youth voices, challenges posed by social media, and the rewards of bridging gaps between generations.
Ruth Gopin is an events and communications manager in the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. She was the Berkley Center’s events and projects manager from August 2019 through April 2022. Prior to that Ruth worked as an independent contractor for the World Faiths Development Dialogue. She holds a B.A. in international development studies from McGill 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.
