Paul Chiariello (Chief Editor)

Paul graduated from Rutgers in 2009 after studying Philosophy and Anthropology. Currently he is on the Board of Directors of the Rutgers Humanist Community, Co-founder of the Yale Humanist Community, and Director of the Humanism & Philosophy Curriculum for Camp Quest.  Paul has a MSc in Sociology of Edu from Oxford, focusing on identity-based conflict in Bosnia, and has spent a year studying philosophy of ethics and religion at Yale on a PhD fellowship.  He has also worked with research organizations and schools in DC,  Uganda, Kenya, India, Germany, and Indonesia.

Esther Boyd

Esther is a humanist celebrant working in multifaith chaplaincy at Johns Hopkins University. She holds an M.A. in Religion and Literature from Yale, where she focused on religious identity, and a B.A. in Religious Studies from Colby College where she studied American religious nationalism. She works primarily with multifaith education and religious literacy with high school, college, and graduate students, but has also created curriculum materials for interfaith leadership training. While at Yale, she founded Yale Divinity School’s humanist interfaith student cooperative, Open Party. Esther is also the Communications Director for State of Formation.

Vanessa Gomez Brake

Vanessa is Co-President of the San Francisco Bay Area Humanists. Currently, she serves on the Board of the North American Interfaith Network, and is on staff at Stanford University’s – Office for Religious Life.  Previously, she worked at The Chaplaincy Institute, An Interfaith Seminary in Berkeley. Vanessa holds a M.S. from the School for Conflict Analysis & Resolution at George Mason University, and bachelor degrees in Psychology and Religious Studies from Arizona State University. In 2014, she graduated from The Humanist Institute‘s – Leadership Graduate Certificate program.

James Croft

James has swiftly become one of the best-known new faces in Humanism today. He is a graduate of the Universities of Cambridge and Harvard, and is currently studying for his Doctorate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  As a leader in training in the Ethical Culture movement – a national movement of Humanist congregations – he is an in-demand public speaker, an engaging teacher, and a passionate activist for human rights. James was raised on Shakespeare, Sagan and Star Trek, and is a proud, gay Humanist. His upcoming book “The Godless Congregation”, co-authored with New York Times bestselling author Greg Epstein, is being published by Simon & Schuster.

John Figdor

John is the humanist chaplain at Stanford, where he organizes programs for students and community members from the San Francisco Bay Area. He received his B.A. with honors in Philosophy from Vassar College and holds a master’s degree (MDiv) in Humanism and Interfaith Dialogue from Harvard Divinity School. Figdor pioneered the Humanist Chaplaincy training program at Harvard, and graduated as Harvard Divinity School’s first Humanist Chaplain. After graduation, he was hired by the Humanist Community at Harvard to be their Assistant Humanist Chaplain. John is a former board member of the Secular Student Alliance and currently advises and serves on their speaker’s bureau.

Faisal Saeed Al-Mutar

Faisal is an Iraqi born writer, public speaker, community manager, web designer and a social activist living currently in the United States. He is an advocate for freedom of thought, science, reason and the free market of ideas and economy.  Al-Mutar is the founder of the Global Secular Humanist Movement on Facebook and the Secular Post, as well as a columnist for Council for Secular Humanism of CFI’s Free Inquiry Magazine and a Community Manager at Movements.org. 

Chris Stedman

Chris is Executive Director of the Yale Humanist Community, atheist columnist for Religion News Service, and a former Harvard University chaplain. He is the author of Faitheist, which Booklist described in a starred review as “an intimate and deeply affecting portrait… [that] proves [he is] an activist in the truest sense and one to watch.” In 2013, Chris was named one of the “five next-gen gurus who are disrupting religion’s status quo” by Details magazine and “the millennial busting every stereotype about atheists” by MicNews. He has written for Salon, CNN, msnbc, USA Today, The Huffington Post, and The Washington Post.