Imam Ummi Nur Allene Ali is CEO and president of Malik Shabazz Human Rights Institute; a United Nations nongovernment representative for the African Committee on Health and Human Rights; a member of the African Woman Alliance NGO; a member of the Partnership of Faith of New York City; a member of the Woman Planning Committee, Auburn Theological Seminary; a member of the Clergy Advisory Committee for Organ/Tissue Transplant Network; a committee member of the Interfaith Advisory Council, Auburn Theological Seminary; and served as a Red Cross chaplain at Ground Zero, New York City.
Chaplain Therese M. Becker, MA, MDiv , is the manager of Spiritual Care Services at Kaiser Permanente in Santa Clara, California. She is a (joyful) Jew by choice. Her interest in disaster spiritual care began when she was doing her theological studies in earthquake country twenty years ago. A certified chaplain, she has worked in community hospitals and trauma centers. Previously, she was a machinist for United Airlines and a welfare worker in Manhattan. She was the first chaplain formally deployed by the American Red Cross to a train crash in Bourbonnais, Illinois, in March 1999. For her, disaster chaplaincy is an honoring of God in the stranger, the ger , which also means "convert."
Rev. David Billings, DMin , has been an antiracist trainer and organizer with The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond since 1983. After thirty-five years in New Orleans, he moved to New York City in the fall of 2004 to work with The People's Institute's New York office. In the fall of 2006 he was appointed the Pauline Falk Chair on Community, Race, and Mental Health with the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services. Rev. Billings is an ordained United Methodist minister. He also is a historian with a special interest in the history of race and racism. Over the years, Rev. Billings's organizing work has been cited for many awards, such as the Westchester County chapter of the… National Association of Social Workers Public Citizen of the Year; the New Orleans Pax Christi Bread and Roses Award; the Loyola University of New Orleans Homeless and Hunger Award; and the National Alliance against Racist Oppression's Angela Davis Award for community service.