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Delegation Blogs & Bios
Back row, left to right
Shanta Premawardhana, Ed Martin, Jeff Carr, Jim Winkler, Aliakbar Rezaei (Iran Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Jonathan Evans, David Robinson, Mary Ellen McNish, Ron Flaming
Front row, left to right
Daryl Byler, Patty Shelly, Geri Sicola, Joe Volk, Maureen Shea,
Photo by Mark Beach
Blogs and articles
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J. Daryl Byler
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Jeff Carr
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Shanta Premawardhana
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Dave Robinson
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Joe Volk
Bios
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J. Daryl Byler
J. Daryl Byler has been director of Mennonite Central Committee's Washington Office since 1994. He is an ordained Mennonite minister and an attorney. He also serves as a member of the Executive Board for Mennonite Church USA.
In connection with his current work, Byler follows and writes about U.S. policy affecting the Middle East. He has traveled frequently to the region, including visits to Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Israel-Palestine.
Prior to his current role, he served for six years as pastor of Jubilee Mennonite Church and as a staff attorney with East Mississippi Legal Services, both in Meridian, Mississippi.
Byler received a Bachelor of Science degree from Eastern Mennonite College in 1979 and an M.A. from Eastern Mennonite Seminary in 1985. He received his law degree from the University of Virginia in 1988.
Byler is married to Cynthia Lehman Byler, from Kidron, Ohio. She teaches elementary school on Capitol Hill. They have three children, Jessica (Denver, Colo.), Holden (Harrisonburg, Va.), and Jeremy (a high-school senior in Washington, D.C.)
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Jeff Carr
www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=about_us.display_staff&staff=Carr
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Ron Flaming
Rev. Ronald Flaming Director of International Programs, Mennonite Central Committee.
Career has included overseas service in India, where he served as principal of Woodstock International School. Dean of Students at Bethel College, N. Newton, Kansas. Pastor in Indiana and Kansas.
BA from Bethel College, N. Newton, KS M.Div from Mennonite Biblical Seminary MS in counseling from Indiana University
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Edward Martin
Ed Martin, the director of Mennonite Central Committee’s
Central and Southern Asia Program since 1989, developed a unique student
exchange and interfaith dialogue program in Iran. The program enables American
students to study Islam and Persian language and literature in Iran and Iranian
students to study Western philosophy and Christian theology in Canada. Ed also
assisted in the organization of several interfaith dialogue conferences between
Iranian Muslim scholars and North American Christian scholars. In addition, he started new
country programs in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.
As director of Mennonite Central Committee’s
Middle East & South Asia Program (1989 – 1992), Martin initiated new country
programs in Syria, Iran and Iraq. From 1985 – 1989 he worked as an
agricultural economist at the International Irrigation Management Institute, in
Sri Lanka.
Martin received his Bachelor of Science in General Engineering at Stanford
University. and completed coursework at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary,
Elkhart, IN. He obtained his Master’s of Public Administration and his Ph.D. in
Agricultural Economics at Cornell University.
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Jonathan Evans
Jonathan Evans (PDF)
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Mary Ellen McNish
Mary Ellen McNish was appointed the general secretary of the American Friends Service Committee by its Board of Directors in June of 2000. In this position, she is responsible for the administration of programs and projects in more than 22 countries and 46 cities in the United States.
“Peace, justice and humanitarian assistance represent the bedrock of our mission,” she states. “With a common vision as our centerpiece, AFSC will move into the future bolstered by a new world wide coordination. This depth and quality will bring sustained organizational growth and a renewed sense of hope and accomplishment.”
Prior to this position, Mary Ellen was the executive director of development at Weil Medical College of Cornell University and New York Presbyterian Hospital and the assistant vice-president for development at Medical College of Pennsylvania and Hahnemann University in Philadelphia, PA.
Mary Ellen has over twenty years of progressive responsibility in non-profit management. She has worked for the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) of Camden County, New Jersey and the Burlington County (NJ) Community Action Agency. A former chief operating officer of Planned Parenthood of Maryland, Mary Ellen spent thirteen years as an educator with public school districts and Head Start programs.
Mary Ellen has served for more than a decade in several roles in Friends General Conference including assistant presiding clerk. She has also served as clerk of Byberry Friends Meeting. She is an experienced public speaker and has particular strengths in strategic planning, fundraising, team building, operations, and organizational development.
Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Mary Ellen holds a B.S. degree in education from East Stroudsburg University and a M.S. degree in business from John Hopkins University.
Mary Ellen lives in Philadelphia.
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Rev. Dr. Shanta Premawardhana
www.ncccusa.org/news/bio.shanta.premawardhana.html
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Maureen Shea
Maureen Shea is the Director of Government Relations for The Episcopal Church. From 1997-2001 she was Special Assistant to the President and was in charge of outreach to the religious community in President Clinton’s Office of Public Liaison. Maureen was Chief of Staff at People For the American Way and its Foundation, lobbying director at Common Cause and the first director of the Women’s Campaign Fund. Since joining the staff of The Episcopal Church, she has traveled to China, the Holy Land, Syria and Tanzania. She presently serves as Chair of Churches for Middle East Peace. Maureen and her husband, Kenn Allen, live on Capitol Hill where they are parishioners at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. They have a 24 year old son, Christopher.
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Patty Shelly (Patricia Shelly)
B.A., Bethel College, 1976 M. Div., Iliff School of Theology, 1980 Ph.D., Iliff School of Theology/University of Denver, 1992.
Patricia Shelly has taught at Bethel since 1985, and served as Campus Minister of Chapel and Worship from 1986-1996 and 2000-2003. She graduated from Bethel in 1976 and did graduate work at the Iliff School of Theology and the University of Denver. She completed her PhD. in Biblical Interpretation from Iliff/D.U. with a doctoral thesis on "Amos and Irony".
Shelly developed an interest in Biblical geography and archaeology after 8 months of study in Jerusalem in 1981 and has been leading study seminars to Israel/Palestine ever since. Every other January, she teaches a travel course to Jerusalem for Bethel students and other interested persons. She teaches courses in biblical studies, theology, and a course in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
From 1996-2000, while on a leave-of-absence from Bethel, she lived in Jerusalem while serving as the country director for Mennonite Central Committee's West Bank and Gaza program. She continues to speak and lecture about the situation in the Middle East.
Shelly is on the board of Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary Great Plains Extension and is a core adjunct faculty member. She is also on the Executive Board of Mennonite Church USA.
Her most recent publication (1996) is Let All Within Us Praise: Dramatic Resources for Worship, a collection of 45 Scripture-based readers theater scripts and 16 original songs, grew out of her work with the weekly chapel service on the Bethel campus.
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Geraldine Sicola
Geraldine (Geri) Sicola, public speaker and popular educator is the Associate General Secretary for International Programs of the American Friends Service Committee. Geri oversees AFSC programs of development, relief and reconstruction, training and support to local groups, and peacebuilding and reconciliation work in more than 30 countries.
Geri brings to AFSC extensive experience in international development, relief and administration. She began her career as a City Planner with New York City and then entered a long and productive relationship with Catholic Relief Services. Starting as a Program Assistant in Kenya her later assignments included Deputy Country Representative in Ethiopia, Country Representative in Tanzania, Sub-Regional Director for the Caribbean.
In 1990, in a mid-career change to the United Nations Children’s Fund, Geri was appointed Chief of the Social Mobilization/Development Section for Kenya and Deputy Director of the Social Mobilization Section at UNICEF’s Headquarters in New York.
Returning to Catholic Relief Services in 1994, she served as Emergency Coordinator for Overseas Operations, Director of Global Relations and Strategic Issues in the Policy division, and Director of Education and Institutional relationships in the U.S. Operations division.
From 2000 to 2003, Geri was President of the North America Region for CARITAS Internationalis. In that capacity, she represented the United States and Canada on the Executive Board of this global confederation of Catholic social service agencies from over 160 countries.
During her distinguished career, Geri has spearheaded strategic alliance initiatives, strategic planning, organizational transformation efforts and program expansion efforts. She is an expert negotiator with strong skills in public speaking, advocacy and representation.
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David Robinson
Dave Robinson is the executive director of Pax Christi USA, the national Catholic peace and justice movement. An internationally recognized expert in the field of disarmament and nuclear deterrence, Robinson has represented Pax Christi International on disarmament issues at the United nations, and regularly serves as a consultant to NGOs and faith-based organizations working on issues of disarmament, human rights, international peace and conflict resolution.
Robinson has led or participated in delegations to Iran (2006), Iraq (2002, 2003), El Salvador (2004), Colombia (2005), Afghanistan (2003), Haiti (2005), and Pakistan (2003), and lectures on a wide range of theological and justice issues, including economic and interracial justice, Just War Theory, the role of faith and politics, the War on Terrorism and foreign policy. Robinson has also participated in a number of direct actions, including campaigns against U.S. nuclear weapons policy, the U.S.-led war in Iraq, and most recently in front of the Sudanese Embassy to call attention to the ongoing humanitarian crisis unfolding in the Darfur region. Robinson is the Executive Editor of The Catholic Peace Voice, a quarterly newsmagazine published by Pax Christi USA, and has been published by numerous secular and religious publications.
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Joe Volk
Joe Volk, Executive Secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, began his career in the peace movement in 1967 when he refused a draft deferment from the United States Army and entered the Army to organize troops to refuse deployment to Vietnam. Joe left the Army in 1969 and shortly thereafter began a career with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), working in three different regional and area offices in the United States for over a decade.
From 1982 to 1990 he served as AFSC's National Secretary for Peace Education. While at AFSC, Joe's work took him to the Soviet Union, the Peoples Republic of China, the West Bank and Gaza, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, East and West Germany, South Africa, Mozambique, Botswana, and Zimbabwe.
In 1990 Joe joined the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), a nonpartisan Quaker lobby in the public interest. Joe's work with FCNL spans a multitude of issues, from supporting legislation on Native American rights to lobbying against the development of new nuclear weapons, to working for a ban on cluster munitions and land mines. A major focus of FCNL's and Joe's work at present is to build support in Congress for a dramatic change in U.S. Middle East policy: to engage Syria and Iran in negotiations on Iraq and other regional issues, to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, and to promote U.S. diplomatic initiatives with Iran as an alternative to U.S. military action. In 2006, Joe traveled again to the Middle East to meet with a wide variety of people in Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine in support of a just solution to the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict that guarantees Palestinian rights as well as the rights of states in the region.
Joe is a past chair, and current member, of the Steering Committee of the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines (USCBL). He is a board member of Africa Action, and he serves on the board of trustees of Wilmington College in Ohio.
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