Named by US News & World Report as one of America's Best Leaders of 2009, Eboo Patel is the Founder and President of Interfaith America, the largest organization positively and proactively engaging religious diversity in the United States. Author of five books, including "Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation" (Beacon Press, 2010) which won the Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion, Eboo has contributed to the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, CNN and National Public Radio. He served on President Obama's inaugural Advisory Council of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships and holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship. He is an Ashoka Fellow, part of a select network of social entrepreneurs changing the world, and has been awarded honorary degrees from over fifteen colleges. Eboo lives in Chicago with his wife, Shehnaz Mansuri, and their two sons.

For more on Eboo, check out https://www.interfaithamerica.org/people/eboo-patel/, follow him on Twitter @EbooPatel and "Like" him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/EbooPatel.

Also, visit Interfaith America's website at www.interfaithamerica.org or follow us on twitter @InterfaithUSA.

Photo credit: Chris Popio, 2012.

Deanna Ferree Womack is Assistant Professor of History of Religions and Multifaith Relations at Emory University's Candler School of Theology in Atlanta. Womack has lectured and published widely on the topics of Middle Eastern history, American missions, and Christian-Muslim relations. Her first book, Protestants, Gender and the Arab Renaissance in Late Ottoman Syria (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), explores the story of the first Arab Protestants and their encounters with American missionaries, other Middle Eastern Christians, and Muslims between 1860 to 1915. Her most recent book, Neighbors: Christians and Muslims Building Community, offers new models for cultivating interfaith awareness and stronger Christian-Muslim friendships in the United States.

Jennifer Howe Peace is the first to hold the position of associate professor of Interfaith Studies at Andover Newton Theological School where she cofounded and has codirected the Center for Interreligious and Communal Leadership Education. Dr. Peace is the founding cochair of the “Interreligious and Interfaith Studies Group” at the American Academy of Religion.

Author photo: Joel Howe

Noah J. Silverman serves as senior director of Learning and Partnerships at Interfaith Youth Core. He served as the associate director of Multifaith Education at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City, and has also worked for the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Barcelona and the Tony Blair Faith Foundation in London.