The Culture of Encounter Project - Georgetown University

Ruben Garcia is the director of Annunciation House in El Paso, Texas. In a Gospel spirit of service and solidarity, Annunciation House supports migrants, refugees, and economically vulnerable people in the U.S.-Mexico border region through hospitality, advocacy, and education.

Rev. David Hollenbach, S.J., is the Pedro Arrupe Distinguished Research Professor in the Walsh School of Foreign Service; a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs; and an affiliated professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University. His teaching and research deal with human rights, religious and ethical responses to humanitarian crises, and religion in political life from the standpoint of Catholic social thought, theology, and the social sciences. His books include Human Rights in a Divided World: Catholicism as a Living Tradition (2024), Humanity in Crisis: Ethical and Religious Response to Refugees (2019), Driven from Home: Protecting the Rights of Forced Migrants (2010) The Global Face of Public Faith: Politics, Human Rights, and Christian Ethics (2003), and The Common Good and Christian Ethics (2002). He has taught often at Hekima University College in Nairobi, Kenya, and he collaborates with Jesuit Refugee Service. From 2020 to 2022 he is a distinguished research associate with the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Hollenbach is also a research associate with the Jesuit Center for Theological Reflection in Zambia. Hollenbach is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Cynthia Juárez Lange is senior counsel at Fragomen and a senior fellow at Brigham Young University's International Center for Law and Religion Studies, representing the center and Latter-day Saint Charities at the Organization of American States in Washington, DC. She has almost 40 years of experience in international immigration law in leadership, strategic growth, and advising international organizations on global mobility programs. She began her career at the U.S. Department of Justice as a United Immigration and Naturalization Service trial attorney in the Attorney General Honors Program. Cynthia was also a long-time adjunct professor at Southwestern University School of Law, where she taught for 18 years. She is a thought leader in the industry and dedicates much of her time to pro bono work. She has been a board member of both the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), the nation’s leading organization dedicated to defending and advancing the rights of low-income immigrants in the United States, and of the NILC Immigrant Justice Fund. Lange is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Mario Marazziti is a spokesperson for the Community of Sant'Egidio on death penalty abolition issues, a founding member of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, and a former deputy in Italy's Camera dei Deputati. He is the author of, among others, 13 Ways of Looking at the Death Penalty (2015).

Katherine Marshall, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, leads the center’s work on religion and global development. She is also a professor of the practice of development, conflict, and religion in the Walsh School of Foreign Service, teaching diverse courses on the ethics of development work and mentoring students at many levels. She helped to create and now serves as the executive director of the World Faiths Development Dialogue, an NGO that works to enhance bridges between different sectors and institutions. In September 2022, she was appointed as a member of the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Marshall has five decades of experience on a variety of development issues in Africa, Latin America, East Asia, and the Middle East, particularly those facing the world’s poorest countries; one way she shares her expertise is through her blog Faith in Action. She was a World Bank officer from 1971 to 2006, and she led the World Bank’s faith and ethics initiative between 2000 and 2006. Marshall is a member of the Working Group on Child Rights and Family Values and the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, both part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Ruth W. Messinger is the global ambassador of American Jewish World Service (AJWS), the world’s leading Jewish organization working to end poverty and realize human rights in the developing world. She previously served as AJWS president from 1998 to July 2016, coming to the organization following a 20-year career in public service in New York City. Messinger is a member of the Working Group on Child Rights and Family Values and the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, both part of the Culture of Encounter Project.