Ambassador Robert A. Seiple, retired President and CEO of the First Freedom Center, served as the first U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. In that position, he was charged with promoting religious freedom worldwide, advancing reconciliation in areas and nations where conflict existed along religious lines, and focusing the State Department's attention on this issue. Ambassador Seiple has also served as President of World Vision, Inc., the largest privately funded relief and development agency in the world; Founder and Director of the Institute for Global Engagement, a "think tank with legs" that develops sustainable environments for religious freedom worldwide; President of Eastern College and Seminary; and in a number of administrative positions at Brown University, including Vice President for Development. From 1966-1969, Seiple served in the U.S. Marine Corps, attaining the rank of Captain and flying 300 combat missions in Vietnam. He was awarded numerous medals, including the Distinguished Flying Cross. Seiple received an A.B. from Brown University in 1965. Ambassador Seiple chairs the Washington Coalition and co-chairs First Step Forum, two groups active in religious freedom issues. He also chairs the Advisory Committee for the Templeton Honors College at Eastern University and serves on the Board of the Denver Seminary.

Kevin J. "Seamus" Hasson, JD, is Founder and President of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a bipartisan, interfaith, public-interest law firm that protects the free expression of all religious traditions (www.becketfund.org). Its central principle is that because the religious impulse is natural to human beings, religious expression is natural to human culture. Hasson and the Becket Fund have successfully represented clients from nearly every faith tradition, literally from Anglicans to Zoroastrians. Hasson enjoys broad credibility in the national media. He has been widely quoted, appearing for example, in Newsweek and The New York Times, as well as on broadcast news programs, including The Today Show, Dateline NBC and Al-Jazeera. He lectures and debates widely at venues ranging from the Harvard Law School to the Vatican, and is the author of The Right to be Wrong, Ending the Culture War over Religion in America. Before founding the Becket Fund, Hasson was an attorney at Williams & Connolly in Washington D.C., where he focused on religious liberty litigation. From 1986 to 1987, he served in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, where he advised the White House and cabinet departments on church-state relations. He is a 1985 magna cum laude graduate of Notre Dame Law School and also holds a Master's degree in theology from Notre Dame.

T. Jeremy Gunn, JD, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Al Akhawayn University in Morocco. He is the former Director of the ACLU's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief (www.aclu.org/religion) and a former Senior Fellow for Religion and Human Rights at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. Gunn is a member of the Advisory Council on Freedom of Religion or Belief of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and advises several organizations involved in freedom of religion and belief, including the First Freedom Center. Gunn received his Ph.D. in the Study of Religion at Harvard University in 1991, a J.D. magna cum laude from Boston University in 1987, and an A.M. from the University of Chicago. Before moving to the ACLU, he was the Director of Research for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and also worked on religious freedom at the U.S. Department of State. He was an attorney in private practice at Covington & Burling. He also was a Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and has taught courses at the Université d'Aix-Marseille in France, the Universität Trier in Germany, the Université de Tunis in Tunisia, and at Université Laval in Québec, Canada. He has dozens of publications to his credit, including the entry, Religious Freedom (Modern Period) in the Encyclopedia of Christianity.

President Rodney A. Smolla, JD, is president of Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. He is the former dean of the Washington and Lee School of Law and the University of Richmond School of Law. Smolla graduated from Yale University in 1975 and Duke Law School in 1978, where he was first in his class. He then served as law clerk to Judge Charles Clark on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. After practicing law in Chicago at Mayer, Brown, and Platt, Smolla entered academic life and taught at law schools at De Paul, University of Illinois, University of Arkansas and The College of William and Mary. He is the author or co-author of several books, and his book Free Speech in an Open Society won the William O. Douglas Award as the year's best monograph on freedom of expression. President Smolla is also a frequent magazine and newspaper contributor and media commentator. He serves on numerous civic and professional boards, including the First Freedom Center's Board of Trustees and on the Center's National Program Advisory Board, on the Board of Directors of the American Arbitration Association, and the Board of Directors of Media General.

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