Ziad J. Asali, M.D. is the President and founder of the American Task Force on Palestine, a non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Washington, DC. Dr. Asali is a long-time activist on Middle East issues. He has been a member of the Chairman's Council of American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) since 1982, and has served as ADC’s President from 2001-2003. He served as the President of the Arab-American University Graduates (AAUG) from 1993-1995, and was Chairman of the American Committee on Jerusalem (ACJ), which he co-founded, from 1995-2003. He has been featured in numerous publications, provided television commentary and interviews for numerous syndicated cable programs and has also appeared on several Arabic television networks. In addition, he is a regular speaker at international conferences and the author of several publications that include: “From Crusades to Zionism” (1993) “Zionist Studies of the Crusades” (1992) “Expedition to Jerusalem” (1990).

Warren Clark was a US Foreign Service officer in the Department of State, serving in Beirut, Aleppo, Luxembourg, Ottawa, at US Mission to the UN in New York, and in Lagos. He was US Ambassador in Libreville and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa.  Upon his retirement he worked as a consultant in Central and Eastern Europe.  In 2005 he received a degree in theological studies from Virginia Theological Seminary.  He later worked for the Washington National Cathedral, at the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, and as a Chaplin at Sibley Hospital. The Ambassador holds a BA from Williams College and graduate degrees from Harvard, Georgetown, and John Hopkins Universities.  The Ambassador speaks French and eastern Arabic. Warren Clark became Executive Director of Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) in January.

Julie Schumacher Cohen is the Legislative Coordinator at Churches for Middle East Peace. Ms. Schumacher Cohen coordinates CMEP’s advocacy efforts, maintaining relationships with key Congressional offices, conducting research related to US policy in the Middle East and producing policy analysis and resources for church members and policymakers. She has also served as a facilitator for Soliya, a video-conferencing dialogue program that connects students from the United States and the Middle East. Prior to coming to Washington, she was the Program Director at US Servas, a cross-cultural exchange organization in New York City. In this capacity, she organized a community building project that brought Jewish, Arab and Christian leaders together for dialogue in the post 9-11 context.

B. Todd Deatherage joined the Office of Policy Planning at the US State Department in July 2005 to serve as the chief of staff to the Director. He also covers Israeli-Palestinian issues. From 2003-05 he was the Senior Advisor in the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom. Prior to joining the Department, Mr. Deatherage spent six years working on Capitol Hill as the chief of staff to U.S. Senator Tim Hutchinson (AR). He received his B.S.E. from the University of Arkansas.

Representative Jeff Fortenberry was elected to the United States House of Representatives in November 2004 to represent Nebraska’s First Congressional District. He is an experienced public servant prepared to meet the challenges before the United States Congress, and is committed to representing the interests of the people of eastern Nebraska. In Congress, Rep. Fortenberry has numerous committee and subcommittee assignments. His service on the Agriculture Committee includes sitting on the Subcommittee on Conservation, Credit, Energy and Research and the Subcommittee on Specialty Crops, Rural Development and Foreign Agriculture. As a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Fortenberry serves on the Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia and the Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health.

Lara Friedman is the Government Relations Director for Americans for Peace Now, working with APN since September 1999. A former U.S. Foreign Service Officer, Lara began her career as an intern at the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan. After joining the Foreign Service in 1992, Lara was posted to Jerusalem, where she was in charge of the settlements portfolio. She was subsequently posted to the State Department's Operations Center in Washington, DC. From there she went to Tunis and then Beirut, where she served as both the Commercial/Economic Officer and the Consul. In addition to her foreign policy experience, Lara has also worked for Citibank (New York) as a Relationship Manager in the Emerging Markets/Financial Institutions Division. Lara has a Bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona and a Master's degree from the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. She speaks French, Spanish, Arabic, and Italian. 

Bishop Mark S. Hanson is the presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Before being elected presiding bishop, he served as bishop of the Saint Paul Area Synod (3H). He had been elected to serve a second term in Saint Paul earlier that same year. Prior to being elected synod bishop, he served as pastor of three Minnesota congregations: Prince of Glory Lutheran Church, Minneapolis; Edina (Minnesota) Community Lutheran Church; and University Lutheran Church of Hope in Minneapolis. Born in Minneapolis on December 2, 1946, he graduated from Augsburg College with a B.A. in sociology. He was a Rockefeller Fellow at Union Theological Seminary, New York City, and received a Master of Divinity degree there in 1972. He also attended Luther Seminary, St Paul, Minnesota, and was a Merrill Fellow at Harvard Divinity School in 1979. He has served as president of the Minnesota Council of Churches; vice chair of the ELCA Conference of Bishops; vice president of the Lutheran World Federation, and is a member of the executive council of the National Council of Churches USA. In 2003, he was elected president of the Lutheran World Federation, a position he holds concurrently with his position as presiding bishop of the ELCA.

Bill Harper is chief of staff to Congresswoman Betty McCollum (D-MN), a member of the U.S. House Appropriations Committee and the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. In 2000, Harper managed McCollum’s successful congressional campaign, helping her to become only the second Minnesota woman ever elected to Washington. Prior to working in Congress, Harper operated his own consulting business assisting local units of government and non-profit organizations address public policy issues. Harper also served for five years as a Peace Corps volunteer working in rural Malawi (1995-98) establishing a community-based HIV/AIDS initiative and in rural Guatemala (1990-92) with family farmers. Other professional experiences include serving as chief of staff to the chairman of the Hennepin County (MN) Board of Commissioners and as staff assistant to former-Minnesota Attorney General Hubert H. Humphrey III. Bill Harper is a graduate of the University of Minnesota.

Ambassador Theodore H. Kattouf (Ret.) was sworn in on August 31, 2001 as the Ambassador to the Syrian Republic. Ambassador Kattouf was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania in 1946. Upon graduating from the Pennsylvania State University, he served for 3-1/2 years in the U.S. Army infantry, attaining the rank of captain. He joined the Foreign Service in 1972. From 1973 to 1975, he served in Kuwait as an economic and commercial officer. Following Kuwait, he attended the Foreign Service Arabic Language Program in Beirut and Tunis before being assigned as a political officer in Damascus. Mr. Kattouf then returned to the United States to serve as a Middle East analyst in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. From 1980 to 1982, he worked as the International Relations Officer in the Near East Bureau. In 1982-1983, Ambassador Kattouf was a State Department mid-career fellow at Princeton University. From 1983 to 1986, Mr. Kattouf served in Baghdad as Deputy Chief of Mission. He then served in Sanaa, one year as Deputy Chief of Mission, and one year as Charge d'Affaires, a.i. Mr. Kattouf returned to the United States in 1988 to serve as Deputy Director and subsequently Director of the Office of Arab North Affairs. In 1962, he returned overseas, first as Deputy Chief of Mission in Damascus, then as Deputy Chief of Mission in Riyadh, where he served from 1995 to 1998. President Clinton nominated Mr. Kattouf as Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and was confirmed by the Senate in September 1998. He was then nominated by President Bush to Syria and confirmed by the Senate in August 2001.

Aaron David Miller, Ph.D. is currently a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC, where he is writing a book about America and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Between 2003 and 2006 he served as president of Seeds of Peace, a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering young leaders from regions of conflict with the leadership skills required to advance coexistence and reconciliation. For the previous two decades, he served at the Department of State as an adviser to six Secretaries of State, where he helped formulate U.S. policy on the Middle East and the Arab-Israel peace process, most recently as the Senior Adviser for Arab-Israeli Negotiations. He also served as the Deputy Special Middle East Coordinator for Arab-Israeli negotiations, Senior Member of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research and in the Office of the Historian. He has received the Department's Distinguished, Superior, and Meritorious Honor Awards. Mr. Miller received his Ph.D. in American Diplomatic and Middle East History from the University of Michigan in 1977 and joined the State Department the following year. During 1982 and 1983, he was a Council on Foreign Relations fellow and a resident scholar at the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies. In 1984 he served a temporary tour at the American Embassy in Amman, Jordan.

Ori Nir is the spokesman for Americans for Peace Now, a Jewish organization with the mission to help Israel and the Shalom Achshav movement to achieve a comprehensive political settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict consistent with Israel's long-term security needs and its Jewish and democratic values. Ori comes to APN from The Forward newspaper, where since 2002 he has been the Washington Bureau Chief for America's largest and most influential independent national Jewish weekly newspaper.  Prior to his stint at The Forward, Ori worked for 16 years at Israel's leading daily newspaper, Ha'aretz, where he served as the Washington Bureau Chief, West Bank Correspondent, and Israeli-Arab's Affairs Correspondent. Ori's opinion and analysis articles have also been published by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun, and New York Newsday. His television appearances include PBS, CNN, ABC News, and CBS. Ori has a Master's degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelor's degree in Middle Eastern history and Arabic literature from Jerusalem's Hebrew University. 

Trita Parsi, Ph.D. is President of the National Iranian American Council a non-partisan, non-political, non-sectarian, and non-profit organization dedicated to promoting Iranian-American participation in American civic life. Dr. Parsi has worked for the Swedish Permanent Mission to the UN in New York where he served in the Security Council handling affairs for Afghanistan, Iraq, Tajikistan and Western Sahara, and the General Assembly's Third Committee addressing human rights in Iran, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Iraq. He has also served as a foreign policy advisor to Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH). His expertise is Iranian foreign policy and US-Iran relations. Dr. Parsi's articles on Middle East affairs have been published in the Financial Times, Jane's Intelligence Review, the Globalist, the Jerusalem Post, The Forward, BitterLemons and the Daily Star. As a Middle East expert, he is a frequent commentator on US-Iranian relations and Middle Eastern affairs, and has appeared on BBC World News, PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, CNN, Al Jazeera, C-Span, NPR, ABC, and MSNBC.  Dr. Parsi was born in Iran and grew up in Sweden. He earned a Master's degree in international relations at Uppsala University, a second Master's degree in economics at Stockholm School of Economics and a PhD in international relations at Johns Hopkins University's SAIS.

Representative David Price represents North Carolina's Research Triangle - a rapidly growing, largely suburban district that includes Raleigh, Cary, Durham, Chapel Hill, and surrounding communities. He received his undergraduate degree at UNC-Chapel Hill and went on to Yale University to earn a Bachelor of Divinity and Ph.D. in Political Science. Before he began serving in Congress in 1987, Price was a professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Duke University. He is the author of four books on Congress and the American political system. Price currently serves on the House Appropriations Committee and is chair of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee. He is also a member of the Appropriations subcommittees for Commerce, Justice and Science and for Transportation, Housing and Urban Development. He is a recognized leader in foreign policy, heading the House Democracy Assistance Commission, which he initiated to help strengthen parliaments in emerging democracies. He has played a leading role in holding the Administration accountable for conduct of the Iraq War and in the effort to negotiate a just peace in the Middle East.

Anna Rhee is Program Consultant for Churches for Middle East Peace. Her work in faith-based public policy advocacy started in the Department of Peace and World Order of the General Board of Church and Society of The United Methodist Church. She has also been the head of the United Methodist Women’s Division’s Washington Office and Director of Religious Affairs for the Children’s Defense Fund. In addition to working with CMEP, Anna serves as the US National Coordinator for the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel.

MJ Rosenberg is the Director of Policy Analysis for Israel Policy Forum (IPF), a position he has held since the spring of 1998. In this position, MJ heads IPF's Washington, D.C. office and writes IPF Friday, a weekly opinion column on the Arab-Israeli conflict which is widely circulated throughout the United States and the Middle East. In addition, MJ has published numerous Op-eds in the national and Jewish press. MJ spent eighteen years within the United States government, fourteen on Capitol Hill as an aide to Representatives Jonathan Bingham (D-New York), Edward Feighan (D-Ohio) and Nita Lowey (D-New York) and Senator Carl Levin (D-Michigan).  Immediately prior to coming to IPF, he was a political appointee to USAID, where he served as Chief of Staff for Thomas Dine, the head of the Eastern Europe/NIS Bureau of USAID. From 1982 to 1986, MJ was editor of Near East Report, the American Israel Public Affair Committee's (AIPAC's) biweekly publication on Middle East Policy.

Bernard Z. Sabella, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Bethlehem University and an authority on the complex social, economic and political issues of the region, especially the challenges facing the rapidly declining Arab Christian population. Living in East Jerusalem, Dr. Sabella is currently serving as elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, and he is Executive Director of the Department of Service to Palestinian Refugees for the Middle East Council of Churches. As an academic and educator, Dr. Sabella has written and spoken about the political socialization of Palestinian youth and their parents and has worked with Jewish and Muslim colleagues on Israeli and Palestinian textbook research. As a Catholic, he was invited by the Holy See to participate in the Catholic-Islamic Liaison meeting in the Vatican in 2004. Dr. Sabella was born in Jerusalem and holds MA and PhD degrees in Sociology from the University of Virginia. He earned his BA at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. 

Chris Seiple, Ph.D. is President of the Institute for Global Engagement a faith-based organization that promotes sustainable environments for religious freedom worldwide. Before coming to the Institute, Seiple was an Earhart Fellow at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he wrote his dissertation on "U.S.-Uzbekistan Relations," receiving his Ph.D. in 2007. Seiple served as an infantry officer in the Marine Corps from 1990 to 1999. His last assignment was in the Pentagon where he was assigned to the Strategic Initiatives Group, an internal "think tank" for the Commandant of the Marine Corps. He also helped establish a "Humanitarian Operations Chair" at Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia, and served as a service representative and writer on the staff of the Congressionally mandated National Defense Panel. Additionally, Seiple helped create "Security for a New Century," a weekly non-attribution forum for Capitol Hill staffers to meet with foreign policy professionals and discuss U.S. engagement in today's international security environment. Dr. Seiple received his M.A. in National Security Affairs from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where he focused on Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict. He is a 1990 graduate of Stanford University where he majored in International Relations, concentrating on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Maureen Shea is the Director of Government Relations for The Episcopal Church.  From 1997-2001 she was Special Assistant to the President and was in charge of outreach to the religious community in President Clinton’s Office of Public Liaison.  Shea was Chief of Staff at People For the American Way and its Foundation, lobbying director at Common Cause and the first director of the Women’s Campaign Fund.   Since joining the staff of The Episcopal Church, she has traveled to China, the Holy Land, and Tanzania.  She presently serves as Chair of Churches for Middle East Peace.

Gary Sick, Ph.D. is the founder and executive director of the Gulf/2000 project. He served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan. He was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis and is the author of two books on U.S.-Iranian relations. Mr. Sick is a captain (ret.) in the U.S. Navy, with service in the Persian Gulf, North Africa and the Mediterranean. He was the deputy director for International Affairs at the Ford Foundation from 1982 to 1987, where he was responsible for programs relating to U.S. foreign policy. Mr. Sick has a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University, where he is Senior Research Scholar, adjunct professor of international affairs and former director of the Middle East Institute (2000-2003). He is a member (emeritus) of the board of Human Rights Watch in New York and chair of the advisory committee of Human Rights Watch/Middle East.

Shibley Telhami, Ph.D. is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, College Park, and non-resident senior fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. Before coming to the University of Maryland, he taught at several universities, including Cornell University, the Ohio State University, the University of Southern California, Princeton University, Columbia University, Swarthmore College, and the University of California at Berkeley, where he received his doctorate in political science. Professor Telhami has also been active in the foreign policy arena. He has served as Advisor to the US Mission to the UN (1990-91), as advisor to former Congressman Lee Hamilton, and as a member of the US delegation to the Trilateral US-Israeli-Palestinian Anti-Incitement Committee. Most recently, he served on the Iraq Study Group as a member of the Strategic Environment Working Group.  He has contributed to The Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times and regularly appears on national and international radio and television.

Ambassador Philip C. Wilcox, Jr. (Ret.) is President of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, a Washington D.C.-based foundation devoted to fostering peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Wilcox retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in September 1997 after 31 years of service. Wilcox entered the Foreign Service in 1966 and has served abroad at U.S. Embassies as Press Attache in Vientiane, Laos, Political and Economic/Commercial Officer in Jakarta, Indonesia, and as Chief of the Economic/Commercial Section in Dhaka, Bangladesh. His last overseas assignment was as Chief of Mission and U.S. Consul General, Jerusalem. In the Department of State, Wilcox has served as Special Assistant to the Undersecretary for Management, Deputy Director for UN Political Affairs in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, and in the Bureau for Middle Eastern and South Asian Affairs as Director for Regional Affairs, Director for Israeli and Arab-Israeli Affairs and as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Middle Eastern Affairs. He also served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research and as Ambassador at Large and Coordinator for Counter Terrorism.

Ron Young is a consultant for the National Interreligious Leadership Initiative for Peace in the Middle East, in which leaders of 25 US Jewish, Christian, and Muslim national religious organizations are working together to mobilize public support for active, fair, and firm US leadership for Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace. Ron Young has spoken and written widely on the Middle East and interfaith cooperation; he taught a course on the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict at Haverford College; organized Interfaith Convocations for Peace; and led trips of US Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders to the Middle East. Ron was invited by the White House for the signing of the historic Israel-PLO Oslo Declaration in 1993. Ron has lectured at the Chautauqua Institution, speaking on peace in the Middle East, and Religion as a Source of Violence or Peace; in 2005 he was Chaplain for a week on the theme, “Iraq and Its Neighborhood.”