Festival's storytellers are master storytellers, friends, neighbors and guests from the local, native, immigrant and refugee communities.
Reverend Guo Cheen is an ordained Buddhist nun in the Mahayana Chan tradition. She has taught meditation, Buddhist scriptures and teachings of the Buddha to a wide range of audiences and venues. She was an immigrant to the United States at age ten. Having experienced different treatment based on her ethnicity and culture, one of the first jobs she took on after college was a civil rights investigator.
Reverend Guo Cheen is active in interfaith dialogues and interspiritual movements, partnership with the Charter for Compassion, and the sharing and distribution of inspiration, such as talks of and interviews with spiritual luminaries and compassionate beings. She is also co‐founding Women of Faith and Spirit organization. She has a Masters in Public Administration. Prior to becoming a nun, she worked as a civil rights policy analyst on a presidential task force in Washington DC.
Reverend Guo Cheen is active in interfaith dialogues and interspiritual movements, partnership with the Charter for Compassion, and the sharing and distribution of inspiration, such as talks of and interviews with spiritual luminaries and compassionate beings. She is also co‐founding Women of Faith and Spirit organization. She has a Masters in Public Administration. Prior to becoming a nun, she worked as a civil rights policy analyst on a presidential task force in Washington DC.
Rabbi James Louis Mirel is Senior Rabbi of Temple B'nai Torah in Bellevue, WA since 1985. He is the author of Stepping Stones to Jewish Spiritual Living, published by Jewish Lights. Rabbi Mirel has served as President of the Pacific Associations of Reform Rabbis, University Kiwanis, Washington State Coalition of Rabbis and the Washington State Jewish Historical Society. He is also a professional musician leading the Mazeltones and Shalom Ensemble, two local klezmer bands. He is a longtime participant in human-rights and interfaith endeavors.
Dr. B. J. Prashantham is a Professor of Counseling Psychology at the Institute for Human Relations, and Director at the Counseling and Psychotherapy Christian Counseling Center in Vellore, India. Dr. Prashantham is also a Clinical Faculty member at the UW Department of Global Health. He is a clinical psychologist with expertise in the field of global mental health, trauma, natural disasters, PTSD and cross-cultural communication. He has worked with the communities in Tamil Nadu that were affected by the tsunami.
His websites are:www.cccindia.org | www.globaltrauma.org | www.drprashantham.comMohammad Fani is Director of Interfaith for the OneWorld 2011, the Product Design & Development and Program Manager at Camp Brotherhood, serves as a member of Northwest Interfaith Community Outreach, the Interfaith Committee Chair at the Islamic Educational Center of Seattle, and the Greater Seattle Council of Muslims, an interfaith entity that serves to create dialogue among Muslim groups in the Puget Sound area. Mohammad came to the U.S. in 1978 from Mashhad, Iran, and has been a guest lecturer at schools, colleges, and houses of worship of different faith traditions. He believes that Interfaith is not about conversion but rather raising awareness about the dignity of difference.
Doug Banner is a master storyteller, educator, community activist, musician and artist. Doug works to facilitate the change processes at all levels of society. He helps people learn how the intellectual/emotional stories we tell promote or prevent positive growth personally and collectively and explore how the “Myths of Our Times” influence our models of leadership and community action. An educator for 30 years, Doug has studied the art and science of storytelling as the core foundation in social and cultural development and positive change. Formerly an elementary school teacher and principal, Doug is now adjunct faculty at Western Washington University. He is the Flow Process Team Leader for The Flow Project where he directs and coordinates data collection and processing.
Jamal Rahman is a Muslim Sufi, one of The Interfaith Amigos, co-minister at Interfaith Community Church, and adjunct faculty at Seattle University. Jamal travels often, co-facilitating workshops and retreats locally, nationally, and internationally. He is the author of "The Fragrance of Faith - the Enlightened Heart of Islam" and co-author of a “Out of Darkness into Light-Spiritual Guidance in the Quran with reflections from Jewish and Christian Sources.” Jamal's passion lies in interfaith community building. He remains rooted in his Islamic tradition but cultivates 'spaciousness' by being open to the beauty and wisdom of other faiths. Through the process of an authentic and appreciative understanding of other paths, Jamal feels that he is becoming a better Muslim. This spaciousness is not about conversion, but about completion. Jamal has an abiding faith in the power of heart to heart connections to encompass differences and dissolve prejudices. He offers private spiritual counseling for individuals and couples.
The Interfaith Amigos were brought together by the events of 9/11. Since then, they have been working together since then to affirm the universal teachings of compassion rooted in the Abrahamic traditions, and have brought their message of deep hope and profound possibilities for healing the person and planet to audiences in the United States, Israel, Palestine and Japan .
Jon Ramer is a leading social entrepreneur, communications designer and self‐described “realistic optimist” who has long recognized—and proven time and again—that business can be a major driver of social change. Jon’s effectiveness at enabling large‐scale collaboration through communication technologies reaches back to the first groupware software to provide an email system for personal computers (The Coordinator, 1984); by 2001, two patents and a few successful startups later, he was turning his focus to community advocacy and social enterprise. Jon is the Executive Director and co‐founder of the Interra Project and the Compassionate Action Network, through which Jon and collaborators brought His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Seattle for a five‐day visit in 2008.
Reverend Steven Greenebaum is the founder and minister at the Living Interfaith Church. He holds Masters degrees in Theology, Mythology and Music. He is the Director of Music at the Evergreen Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Marysville. He has been deeply interested in environmental and social justice issues, spending three years as the Executive Director of Citizens for Environmental Responsibility.
Reverend Steven Greenebaum is the founder and minister at the Living Interfaith Church. He holds Masters degrees in Theology, Mythology and Music. He is the Director of Music at the Evergreen Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Marysville. He has been deeply interested in environmental and social justice issues, spending three years as the Executive Director of Citizens for Environmental Responsibility.
Wahab Alansari
Dr. Bryan Saario
Dieu-Hieu Hoang
Elizabeth Dunham
Amineh Ayyad
Eyas Rashid
Ibrahim Soudi
Raja Atallah
and many more community members.
