Berkley Center

Rev. Fletcher Harper is an Episcopal priest and the executive director of GreenFaith. A leader in the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative, he helps spearhead the faith-based fossil fuel divestment movement, organizes faith turnouts at major climate mobilizations, and is a co-founder of Shine, an international campaign that supports women and community-led renewable energy access initiatives in Africa and India. He is the author of GreenFaith: Mobilizing God’s People to Protect the Earth (2015).

Michael Kessler is executive director of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University, an associate professor of the practice of moral and political theory in the Department of Government, and an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown Law. Kessler’s research and writing focus on theology, philosophical and religious ethics, and social, political, and legal theory. He is interested in problems of law and religion, both globally and in the U.S. constitutional context. Kessler is the author of several edited volumes, including The Oxford Handbook of Political Theology, co-edited with Shaun Casey (Oxford University Press, forthcoming); Political Theology for a Plural Age (Oxford University Press, 2013); and Mystics: Presence and Aporia, co-edited with Christian Sheppard (University of Chicago Press, 2003). He also wrote “Engaging Religion in U.S. Foreign Affairs,” a chapter in the Companion to Religion and Politics in the United States (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016). Kessler is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Rodrigo Pedroso is a Brazilian journalist who reports for CNN. He has covered the post-conflict in Colombia and currently reports on social and political issues in the Amazon. He is also an Amazon Rainforest Journalism Fund grantee at the Pulitzer Center.

Niyanta Spelman is the founder and CEO of Rainforest Partnership, a U.S. headquartered international non-profit that is dedicated to protecting tropical rainforests. Rainforest Partnership conserves and restores tropical rainforests by working with communities to develop sustainable livelihoods that empower and respect both people and nature.