Conference Presentations

Rob Faust is a keynote speaker, performer, director and a producer.

Rob Faust is the founder and artistic director of Faustwork Mask Theatre. Since 1983 he has produced and created six shows that have toured to theatres, corporate events, festivals, schools, and university campuses. Faustwork’s two symphony shows were created in 2006 and 2007 respectively. Faustwork has appeared worldwide at a variety of venues, including The Sydney Opera House, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, The Kennedy Center in D.C., The Kentucky Center for the Arts, and The Maui Arts and Cultural Center. The company has performed in 48 U.S. states, Canada, Italy, England, Germany, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Brunei, Israel, and South Africa.

Mr. Faust has also collaborated and performed with Jules Feiffer, The Paul Winter Consort, and Pilobolus Dance Theater, with appearances on Broadway and The Tonight Show. Mr. Faust designs and creates the masks used in his keynote presentations and stage performances.

““Rob Faust is an innovative speaker. His powerful messages grow on you quickly. Twice he has addressed our groups and both times our audiences loved him.” Nido Qubein, Author, Consultant, Speakers Hall of Fame

“Tickles some sort of primal funny bone” The New York Times

FAUSTWORK
www.RobFaustSpeaker.com
www.faustwork.com
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Prof. Kamran Mofid is Founder of the Globalisation for the Common Good Initiative (founded at an international conference in Oxford in 2002) and Co- founder/Editor, Journal of Globalisation for the Common Good, hosted at Purdue University, USA, member of the International Coordinating Committee (ICC) of the World Public Forum, Dialogue of Civilisations, and Founding Member, World Dignity University, and Global Advisory Board, Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies. Mofid received his BA and MA in economics from the University of Windsor, Canada in 1980 and 1982 respectively. In 1986 he was awarded his doctorate in economics from the University of Birmingham, UK. In 2001 he received a Certificate in Education in Pastoral Studies at Plater College, Oxford. From 1980 to 2000 he was Economic Teaching Assistant, Tutor, Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at Universities of Windsor (Canada), Birmingham, Bristol, Wolverhampton, and Coventry (UK). Mofid's work is highly interdisciplinary, drawing on Economics, Business, Politics, International Relations, Theology, Culture, Ecology, Ethics and Spirituality. Mofid's writings have appeared in leading scholarly journals, popular magazines and newspapers. His books include Development Planning in Iran: From Monarchy to Islamic Republic , The Economic Consequences of the Gulf war, Globalisation for the Common Good, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility and Globalisation for the Common Good , Promoting the Common Good (with Rev. Dr. Marcus Braybrooke, 2005), and A non-Violent Path to Conflict Resolution and Peace Building (Co-authored, 2008).

www.gcgi.info

Dr. Atif Khalil teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Lethbridge. His area of specialization lies in the formative period of Sufism, with a focus on the early development of Islamic moral and spiritual psychology. He completed his doctorate at the University of Toronto in 2009 with a thesis on repentance in early Sufism. He has also had the opportunity to study in more traditional settings in Syria and Yemen.

Merin Shobhana Xavier is a PhD Student in the joint Religious Diversity Program in Wilfrid Laurier and Waterloo University. Her area of interests is primarily in Islamic mysticism of South Asia and North America, through the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship, a transnational Sufi order in Philadelphia with ties to Sri Lanka. The Fellowship is based on the teachings of Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (d. 1986). Her interests include metaphysical teachings of Islamic mysticism and also lived Sufi practices through adherent’s performance of rituals and piety. Her dissertation project she seeks to explore questions of transnationalism, Islamic-Sufi identity and politics of race, culture and religious negotiations of identity formation. As a trained primary and secondary teacher, she also seeks to utilize this research in classroom pedagogical practices, especially with regards to how religious identities informs student’s understanding of knowledge, how knowledge is formed and how to integrate varying sites of knowledge production to help students approach learning and holistic knowledge differently (i.e., heart-knowledge and mind-knowledge).

At the age of twenty-nine, Orest was IBM's technical director at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology responsible for the development of the Space Flight Operations Facility computer complex and programming that controlled the first soft landing on the moon.

Orest is the author of books, including: Yes It's Love: Your Life Can Be A Miracle (1974/2009), One (1977/1978), You (1988/2001), Celebrate Your Divinity: The Nature of God and the Theory of Everything (2005/2007), '1': The Foundation and Mathematization of Physics (2008/2013), and Exodus III (2011/2013).

Doris R. Jakobsh is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Waterloo. She has degrees from the University of Waterloo, Harvard University and the University of British Columbia. She is the author of Relocating Gender in Sikh History: Transformation, Meaning and Identity, Oxford University Press (2003, 2005), Sikhism. Dimensions of Asian Spirituality Series, University of Hawaii Press (2011) and has edited Sikhism and Women. History, Texts and Experience, Oxford University Press (2010) and the two volume World Religions - Canadian Perspectives: Eastern and Western Traditions, Nelson Publishers (2013) as well as numerous journal articles and chapters. Professor Jakobsh is the director of ‘The Living Traditions of India’, a three-month India-study trip for University of Waterloo students in which students are immersed in the religions and cultures of India, as well as being a founding member of the Steering Committee Member of the Sikh Consultation of the American Academy of Religion. She was the Director of Women's Studies at the University of Waterloo from 2011-2012. Dr. Jakobsh also serves on a number of local and international editorial boards and advisory committees associated with the study of religion, spirituality and Sikh studies, including SHEN.

Chetan Kothari, affectionately known as 'Che', is the Executive Director of Manifesto Community Projects, whose mission is to unite, inspire and empower diverse communities of young people through arts and culture. Manifesto is best known for hosting the annual Manifesto Festival of Community & Culture, which has grown to become Canada's largest celebration of hip hop culture and beyond. Manifesto has 2 sister organizations Manifesto Jamaica & Manifesto Barbados. In addition to his role as Executive director, Che spends time as a mentor, workshop facilitator, keynote speaker and is also an internationally recognized portrait photographer and has shot some of the leading artists of our time. He is involved on a number of boards and advisory's, both locally, nationally, and internationally, and is building a strong legacy of youth arts organizing tied to self-actualization globally.

Culture. Love. Positivity. Opportunity. Change. These are the words that sum up what Che stands for. At a young age, he has not only become an accomplished photographer but also a role model and leader within his community dedicated to fostering other young artists and young leaders in the cities he lives in and the world at large.

Fresh out of school, he focused his lens on documenting the current artists of our time – those artists who had a message of social change embedded into their storytelling. He has photographed intimate portrait sessions with the likes of Ziggy Marley, Ice Cube of NWA, Chuck D of Public Enemy, Zaki Ibrahim, Common, Talib Kweli, Dead Prez, Afrika Bambaataa, K’naan, Erykah Badu, Nas, k-os, Shad, and many others as personal work as well as for covers of magazines and publications. These images have been apart of over 100 exhibitions from museums to the streets in Toronto Canada, Kingston Jamaica, New York USA, Tokyo Japan, Bombay India and more.

Although che had ample opportunity to focus solely on photography and play a role in helping to document social leaders of our time, he knew he had a responsibility to do more. The next step for che was building a non-profit organization, Manifesto Community Projects, of which he serves as the volunteer Executive Director. Manifesto is a grassroots organization whose mission is to empower young people through culture; it works to unite, energize, support and celebrate vibrant and diverse arts communities, and find innovative ways of working together towards common goals. Manifesto aims to provide a platform and the resources needed to advance the growth of the arts as a tool for positive change. che also co-founded sister organizations of Manifesto in Kingston Jamaica and Barbados. Manifesto’s main initiative in each country is a multi-day annual festival. Growing to be the largest and most unique festival of its kind in each city, the annual Manifesto Festival of Community & Culture brings together countless community members, artists, performers, and audience members to showcase local youth culture, strengthen foundations by building a collective sense of pride and possibility, and provide a stage for voices that are often marginalized from mainstream arts festivals.