Syeda Henna Babar Ali

Advisor to Division, Chairperson of Dinnipon Inks, and Director Packages Real Estate Pvt Limited

Syeda Henna Babar Ali was schooled at the Convent of Jesus and Mary, Cathedral School for O and A levels. She has a BA and MA in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan, started a publishing house, worked for The Nation Newspaper and was inducted into the family business at Packages Limited as publication advisor. She joined the nascent Consumer Cell which later became the Consumer Division, producing tissue paper products under the brand names of Rose Petal, Tulip, Double Horse. Henna has worked as product manager, group brand manager and is now Advisor to the Division, Chairperson of Dinnipon Inks, and Director Packages Real Estate Pvt Limited. She has authored 9 books of poetry in English and one in Urdu. Her English poetry has won her national and local awards. Henna composes spiritual music and hymns and has produced two CD’s sung by local artists.

Farah Chery-Medor

Country Cultural Affairs Officer, U.S. Embassy - Islamabad

Farah Chery-Medor is the Country Cultural Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy - Islamabad. Prior to this assignment, Farah served as the director of the Office of Global Health Diplomacy (GHD), situated in the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator and Health Diplomacy where she worked to elevate U.S. global health priorities. Before GHD, Farah completed a master’s degree program at the National War College. She has also served as a career development officer for mid-level public diplomacy officers, deputy POLAD at the National Guard Bureau and public diplomacy desk officer in the bureaus of African and Near Eastern Affairs. Overseas assignments include Baghdad, Morocco, Tunisia, Nigeria and Qatar.

Dr. Deion Hawkins

Assistant Professor, Argumentation and Advocacy; Director, Forensics, Emerson College

Dr. Deion Hawkins, PhD (George Mason University), M.A. (Marshall University), B.A. (Ohio State University) is an assistant professor of Argumentation & Advocacy and the Director of Forensics at Emerson College. He started competitive public speaking and debating at age 13, and began coaching in 2012. Since 2012, Dr. Hawkins has coached multiple national finalists including 2 national championships in debate. In addition to debate, Dr. Hawkins is a health communication scholar whose research utilizes intercultural theory to mitigate health disparities. Deion is an avid social justice advocate for marginalized communities.

Course: The Basics of Public Speaking

Susan Hackley

Former Managing Director, Program on Negotiation, Harvard Law School

As the former chief administrative and financial officer for Program on Negotiation (PON), Susan Hackley oversaw all operations for spearheading PON's interdisciplinary activities. She also managed the publication of a variety of books and teaching materials, including the monthly Negotiation newsletter and the quarterly Negotiation Journal. Susan has taught negotiation seminars in China, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain and Italy. Before joining PON, she worked in politics as a policy analyst and served as communications director of the Massachusetts Democratic Party. As a writer/photographer, she has had work published in National Geographic Magazine, the Los Angeles Times and many other publications. She also co-founded an Internet company, an e-philanthropy site dedicated to helping people connect to causes they care about. Susan has a masters in public administration from Harvard Kennedy School and served as chair of the board of directors of the Alliance for Peacebuilding.

Course: The Art of Negotiation

Anthony Miranda

Cultural and Educational Affairs Counselor, U.S. Embassy New Delhi

Anthony Miranda is the Cultural and Educational Affairs Counselor, leading the U.S. Mission’s public engagement strategies and programming. Overseas, he has served in Munich, Germany; Kabul, Afghanistan; Sofia, Bulgaria; and Madrid, Spain. Domestically he has served at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York City and in Washington in the Executive Secretariat and in the Bureaus of Western Hemisphere and Intelligence & Research. Prior to joining State, he practiced law in Washington, DC. A first-generation American, he hails from Miami, FL.

Dr. Syed Mubin Zehra

Senior Assistant Professor, Department of History, ARSD College,University of Delhi, India 

Dr Syed Mubin Zehra is a senior faculty at the Delhi University prestigious college ARSD. She is a PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) New Delhi. She is an award winning writer/columnist and has been awarded the United Nations sponsored Laadli media award twice for her writings on gender sensitization. She has been the recipient of IVLP program twice of the United States State Department and visited the United States on the fellowship program and visited various universities and institutes and cities across the United States of America. She is also the author of several books and a senior columnist with various national and international newspapers and magazines. Listed among most promising fifty Muslim Indian Women by The Sunday Indian magazine. Also, a well-known face on various national and international TV channels. She is invited as a subject expert across universities and institutes to deliver talks. She is member of many reputed bodies like Institutional Ethics Committee Hamdard University New Delhi, INDIAN WOMEN PRESS CORPS, MHRD UGC Committee on Madrasa education Modernisation. Her academic interests are women, gender, history, media, interfaith studies, and countering violent extremism. She firmly believes in nonviolent approach to all concerns.

Gregory Payne, PhD

Chair, Communication Studies Department, Emerson College

Dr. J. Gregory Payne is Chair of Emerson College’s Department of Communication Studies. He also is the Co-Director of the Emerson Blanquerna Center for Global Communication and received an “Honoris Causa” from the University of Ramon Llull in Barcelona in the fall of 2019 for his distinguished academic and professional career. He has taught at Yale and Tufts University.

Dr. Payne received his B.A, M.A. and PhD at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and also earned an MPA from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He has authored books, chapters, articles and proceedings and has lectured internationally on topics related to political communication, public diplomacy, health communication, media, ethics, leadership, negotiation, crisis and risk communication. He is on the Advisory board of the Journal of Health Communication, Tripidos, American Behavioral Scientist, Media Ethics, Journal of Promotion Management, among others. He has been the invited editor for American Behavioral Scientist’s special edition on the U.S. presidential campaign for every election since l988. He is past President of the International Academy of Business Disciplines, past chair of the Political Communication Division of the National Communication Association, and Advisory Board member of the Global Public Relations Project.

Course: Real News vs. Fake News: Media Literacy 101

Mossarat Qadeem

Co-founder, PAIMAN Alumni Trust

Mossarat is  a pioneer organization in preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) in Pakistan. Mossarat is internationally known expert on P/CVE, de-radicalization, women peace and security and has spoken in the UN GA and SC on the subject. She is a member of the International Review Panel of GCERF, WASL, and ‘Commonwealth Women Mediators Network’. She advocates in the realm of women peace and security at the national and international level.  

She was professor at the University of Peshawar for fourteen years and has published two books, written articles, produced documentaries on women in regional peace, preventing and countering violent extremism,  interfaith harmony etc. She established Amn-O-Nisa a tripartite network of women peacebuilders from Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan. She was a minister of information and also a member of National Commission on the Status of Women. She holds a master's degree in Political Science, Peshawar as well in Gender studies International Institute of Social Sciences, Den Hague, M.Phil degree in International Politics, University of Hull, and a fellowship in governance from J.F. Kennedy School of Governance, Harvard.

She is a visiting fellow at Center for Women peace and Security, London School of Economics

 Her woman and youth peace group TOLANA has received international recognition for its unprecedented work in preventing violent extremism and building peaceful communities. She is recipient of many prestigious national and international awards

Swarna Rajagopalan, PhD

Founder, Prajnya; Founding Member, Women's Regional Network, Visiting Professor of Politics, Krea University

Swarna Rajagopalan is a feminist peace educator who trained as a political scientist specializing in security studies. She writes prolifically for both academic projects and media platforms on peace, gender and politics. Her books include Women, Security, South Asia: A Clearing in the Thicket, co-edited with Farah Faizal, Sage, (2005), which is one of the first collections of empirical articles in the area, and Openings for Peace: UNSCR 1325, Women and Security in India, co-edited with Asha Hans, SAGE (2016). She is the founder of The Prajnya Trust, a Chennai-based non-profit working towards gender equality and peace and a founding member of the Women's Regional Network, a network of women peace activists from Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka. Dr. Rajagopalan is a Visiting Professor of Politics at Krea University. A fuller bio and listing of publications are available online at swarnar.com/portfolio and she is active on Twitter @swarraj.

Rick Rendon

Founder, Empower Peace

Mr. Rendon is the founder of Empower Peace and Senior Partner of The Rendon Group, a Boston-based communications firm that specializes in public affairs campaigns. Empower Peace was founded on the premise that young people, through communication and the promotion of cultural understanding, could help pave the way for peace. Mr. Rendon holds strong to the beliefthat our future generation has the ability to create change and that they hold the key to breaking down the cultural barriers that threaten to divide the Western, Muslim and Arab worlds.

Throughout his career, Mr. Rendon has taken great pride in creating and developing innovative community-based initiatives and social campaigns. Working with community leaders and activists, Mr. Rendon helped create and organize the world’s largest school-based racial harmony campaign. For seven years “TEAM HARMONY” brought together over 15,000 middle and high school students from throughout New England to discuss the issues of hatred and prejudice and to develop programs to promote diversity and harmony in schools and communities region wide. Team Harmony’s keynote speakers have included former United States President Bill Clinton, United States Senator and former First Lady, Hillary Clinton, former United States Attorney General Janet Reno, and the Reverend Bernice King (daughter of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.).

Mr. Rendon was also the creator and co-founder of the school-based program, “UNITED WE STAND FOR AMERICA”. This program was developed post 9/11 to provide youth with an opportunity to express their emotions and feelings in the wake of the terrorist attacks. Students throughout Massachusetts were recruited to create individual messages of peace, hope, and patriotism on six-inch tiles of red, white and blue fabric. This fabric was then assembled to create a giant quilt of an American flag (nearly half the size of a football field). Over 700 schools and 50,000 students participated in this program.

Mr. Rendon, working with the Islamic Society of Boston, the Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General, and the Governor’s Task Force on Hate Crimes, developed the “OUTNUMBER THE HATE” campaign. This Massachusetts school-based campaign encouraged students to rally against hate, prejudice and intolerance experienced by Muslim and Arabs in the United States post-9/11. In response to the 1,700 hate crimes reported against Muslims and Arabs living in America, Massachusetts’ students responded by creating OVER 1,700 messages of respect, diversity and tolerance. In addition to over thirty years of experience as a senior communications consultant, Mr. Rendon served previously as a Public Information Officer for the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and as a member of United States President Jimmy Carter’s national political staff.

Mehroz Sajjad

Communications and Public Relations Professional and PhD Candidate

Mehroz Sajjad is a Communication and Public Relations professional from Lahore, Pakistan and is currently enrolled in the Doctoral program at the College of Communication and Information- University of Kentucky. Her current area of research is the intersection between social wicked problems and strategic communication. Mehroz is also a Fulbright Scholar and a graduate of Emerson College, Boston. Her past experience includes teaching at the School of Media and Mass Communication -Beaconhouse National University (BNU), where she also served as the interim Head of Department. Mehroz has also worked closely with the Glob Com project for the last few years as an external advisor. She has been involved in organizing global events for almost a decade and loves to generate dialogue with the aim of creating awareness and tolerance.

Mason West

Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School

Mason West III earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Theology at Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama. He later earned his Masters degree in Urban and Regional Planning and Community Development from Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University. Currently he is pursuing his Doctoral Degree in Educational Leadership at the University of Tennessee. For fifteen years Mr. West served as an instructor and administrator. He has educated youth in Georgia, Alabama and Bermuda as an exceptional Religion and Social Studies instructor. Mr. West also served as an associate pastor at the West End Church in Atlanta Georgia and the Madison Mission Church in Madison, Alabama. Currently, Mr. West serves others in several capacities. He is the Director of Community Learning at the Randolph School in Huntsville, Alabama. He is the Director of Ministry for the Buckhead Community Fellowship Ministry in Atlanta, Georgia. He is the founder and CEO of the Mason West Group (MWG), a youth leadership consulting company. His company specializes in the creation of youth leadership programs. In 2003, Mr. West started his Talented Tenth Leadership Program to teach youth how to influence their peers, their government and their economy. Mr. West is also the co-founder and Chief Operations Officer for Engage Youth Empowerment Services, a youth advocacy company based in Wolverhampton, England.

Course: The Leader in You