Wa’el Alzayat is CEO of Emgage USA, a leading Muslim American civic engagement organization, and adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He previously spent a decade serving in various policy positions at the Department of State, including senior policy advisor to Ambassador Samantha Power; Syria outreach coordinator for Ambassador Robert Ford; and special assistant to Ambassador James Jeffrey. Wa’el was also a provincial affairs officer in Anbar, Iraq, for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad during the Surge of 2007-08. He previously worked as a multimedia advertising business development executive in the San Francisco Bay Area.
He received an MS from Georgetown University and BA in Middle East history and political science from the University of California at Berkeley.
Congressman Steven Israel is Chairman of Long Island University Global Institute and a former United States Representative from New York’s third congressional district, serving from 2001 to 2017. He is a member of the Democratic Party and was head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee until November 2014. He supported increased regulation on gun ownership and voted for the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Before serving in Congress, he served on the town board of Huntington, New York.
Senator Joseph Lieberman is a former United States Senator and Attorney General of the State of Connecticut. He was the Democratic Vice- Presidential nominee in 2000, and retired from the United States Senate following the end of his fourth term. During his tenure, Senator Lieberman helped shape legislation in virtually every major area of public policy, including national and homeland security, foreign policy, fiscal policy, environmental protection, human rights, health care, trade, energy, cyber security, and taxes. He currently serves as the Senior Counsel to Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman LLP in New York.
Senator Lieberman received his JD and BA from Yale University.
Dr. Georgette Bennett is an award-winning sociologist, widely published author, popular lecturer, and former broadcast journalist. An innovative and entrepreneurial leader, she is an active philanthropist focusing on conflict resolution and intergroup relations. In 2013, Bennett founded the Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees (MFA) and has since worked to raise awareness and mobilize more than $130 million of humanitarian aid on behalf of Syrian war victims. In 1992, she founded the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding. She is also a co-founder of the Global Covenant of Religions/Global Covenant Partners, which focuses on delegitimizing the use of religion to justify violence and extremism. Bennett served in the U.S. State Department Religion and Foreign Policy initiative’s working group on conflict mitigation, tasked with developing recommendations for the U.S. Secretary of State on countering religion-based violence. She serves as Chair of the Jewish Funders Network and on the Boards of the International Rescue Committee and Third Way. In addition, she is an Advisory Board member for the Milstein Center on Interreligious Dialogue at the Jewish Theological Seminary and NYU’s Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.
Aziza Hassan is Executive Director of NewGround: A Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change. An experienced mediator and conflict-transformation practitioner, she has extensive experience in program management and coalition-building, working with diverse groups to deliver quality programming that developed the skills of its participants in the areas of civic engagement, advocacy, service learning, leadership, conflict transformation. and diversity training. Aziza’s work has been featured on Ozy, Yahoo News, MSN.com, Public Radio’s “Speaking of Faith” with Krista Tippett, the United States Institute for Peace, Arabic radio and television, as well as in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, the L.A. Times, the Jewish Journal, and InFocus. Her two years of AmeriCorps service gave her hands-on experience in community organizing and group problem-solving. She earned the “President’s Volunteer Service Award” in 2006, and served on President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships in 2015-16. Aziza is currently on Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Interfaith Advisory Council and is a volunteer mediator with the Los Angeles City Attorney office.
Aziza earned her Master’s in History from Wichita State University, and her BA from Bethel College-North Newton.
Adam M. Ansari is a practicing attorney at Levun, Goodman & Cohen, LLP, in Northbrook, Illinois, where his practice focuses on partnership, LLC, and S corporation taxation; representation of closely held businesses; and probate, estate, and special needs planning. Adam has recently devoted a significant amount of pro bono representation to immigrant families, and has appeared on television and radio to comment on issues related to immigration. Adam is also involved in national and local nonprofits and advocacy groups such as Courage for Progress, which supports candidates who stand up to hatred and intolerance and advocate on behalf of immigrant Americans; Logan Services, a 501(c)(3) committed to supporting those with intellectual and developmental disabilities; and the Rafat and Zoreen Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion at Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs.
Adam earned a JD from the John Marshall Law School and an MBA from Dominican University, and will complete his LLM in taxation from the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in May 2018. He holds a BA in international relations from Boston University.
Rabbi David N. Saperstein is Director Emeritus of the Religious Action Center (RAC) of Reform Judaism, having previously been its Director for 40 years, and Senior Advisor to the Union for Reform Judaism for Policy and Strategy. He is also a Senior Fellow at both Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, and its School of Foreign Service’s Center for Jewish Civilization. He has served as U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom. A rabbi and an attorney, Ambassador Saperstein taught seminars in First Amendment church-state Law and in Jewish law at Georgetown University Law Center. Over the course of his long career, Ambassador Saperstein has chaired or co-chaired several national interreligious coalitions, including the Coalition to Preserve Religious Liberty, and served on the boards or executive committees of such national organizations as the NAACP, People for The American Way, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the National Religious Partnership on the Environment, and the World Faith Development Dialogue.
David Sable has been Global Chief Executive Officer of Y&R, one of the world’s largest marketing communications networks. He first worked at Y&R in 1976 and has held senior roles in other Y&R family companies, including Burson-Marsteller and Cohn & Wolfe, as well as Wunderman, where he helped transform the agency into one of the world’s leading digital networks. David chairs the Advertising Council’s Board of Directors, and for many years was a Director-at-Large of the 4As.
David is a frequent contributor to The Huffington Post and a LinkedIn Influencer, and has blogged The Weekly Ramble since 2006. He also was an Executive Producer on MTV’s highly acclaimed REBEL MUSIC series. In 2013, Fast Company named David one of the “10 Most Generous Marketing Geniuses.” He serves on the U.S. Fund for UNICEF’s National Board and was founding chair of its NY Board. He serves on NY’s Volunteer State Office of National and Community Service Commission and served 14 years on the NY Cultural Advisory Committee. He sits on the Boards of UNCF and the Christopher Reeve Foundation, and is deeply involved with the Special Olympics.
Mohamad Ali is President and Chief Executive Officer of Carbonite. Under his leadership, Carbonite’s global team is fully engaged in developing and delivering the next generation of data-protection solutions. Driven by a passion for technology, Mohamad previously served as Chief Strategy Officer at Hewlett Packard, where he played a pivotal role in the company’s turnaround. He also worked at IBM, where he created and led the firm’s eight-billion-dollar business analytics software unit, and at Avaya, he oversaw the company’s two-billion-dollar services group. Mohamad serves on the boards of iRobot, Oxfam America, and the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council.
Mohamad holds three degrees from Stanford University: a Master’s in Electrical Engineering, a BS in Computer Engineering, and a BA in History.
Ahmad Nassar is President of NFL Players Incorporated, the National Football League Players Association’s licensing and marketing business, overseeing all operations of this company that takes in $160M a year. He leads commercial negotiations with the NFL and other key partners, and frequently works with the players associations of other professional sports on business and legal issues of mutual importance. Ahmad co-founded and launched Athlete Content & Entertainment, a start-up company focused on delivering athlete lifestyle content across all media, as well as the OneTeam Collective. He received Sports Business Journal’s prestigious Forty under 40 award, and taught sports law at Georgetown University.
Ahmad received his JD from the University of Chicago School of Law, and his BA in economics and Near Eastern studies from the University of Michigan. Ahmad was law clerk to the Honorable Denise Page Hood, Chief Judge of the Eastern District of Michigan, and then worked in the Washington, D.C. offices of Latham and Watkins and Patton Boggs.
