Jim Kenney

IEP21 Executive Director, Jim Kenney.

• Founder and Executive Director, Interreligious Engagement Project (IEP21) (2002 - present); working with global religious communities to address the world's critical problems through cooperative partnerships with government, business, education, media, intergovernmental organizations, and civil society.

• Co-Editor, Interreligious Insight: a Journal of Dialogue and Engagement, published four times each year in the US and the UK by the World Congress of Faiths, the Interreligious Engagement Project, and Common Ground. Insight was founded in 2003. The Editor-in-Chief is Rev. Alan Race, Leicester UK, a trustee of IEP21.

• Co-founder (1975) and Executive Director (1988 - present), Common Ground, an adult educational organization and study center which offers a wide range of programs focusing on the great cultural, religious, philosophical, and spiritual traditions and their implications for every dimension of human experience. The Common Ground Center is located at 815 Rosemary Terrace, Deerfield, Illinois, 60045. (847) 940-7870.

• Trustee, International Committee for the Peace Council (1995 - present); bringing together some of the worldÕs most revered and influential religious and spiritual leaders in service to world peace. The Peace Council had its inaugural meeting at Windsor Castle, London, in November, 1995; members include Nobel Laureates His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Mairead Maguire, as well as Bishop Samual Ruiz Garcia, Sr. Joan Chittister, Dr. Chung Hyun-kyung, Samdhong Rinpoche, Ven. Dhammananda, Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman, and many others. The Peace Council has pursuing initiatives in relation to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines; the Mayan people of Chiapas, Mexico; peace in Cambodia; the China-Tibet situation; peace in the Middle East; and relations between North and South Korea.

• Former Global Director, Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions (1995 - 2002); creating new structures and contexts for interreligious dialogue and cooperation. The Parliament process is dedicated to the facilitation of international interreligious encounter, dialogue, and commitment to cooperative common action, bringing the leaders and the faithful of the great religious and spiritual traditions together to make a better world.

• Former Director (2005-2006) and current Council Member, SAIV Global Council [Spiritual Alliance Against Intimate Violence], (2002 - present); founded by Riane Eisler (author, The Chalice and the Blade) and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Betty Williams, SAIV works to construct solid foundations for cultures of peace by bringing the scourge of intimate violence - and its link to international violence - to the attention of policy makers and the public at large and by enabling concrete action projects to address the problem worldwide.

• Former Trustee, International Interfaith Centre, Oxford, UK (1995 - 2004); the Centre is devoted to facilitating cooperation of people and groups actively engaged in interreligious work, to providing information about interfaith activities worldwide, and to promoting research into ways of developing interreligious understanding, cooperation, and respect for religious freedom. The Centre is actively involved in developing structures and modes of cooperation among the world's major international interreligious organizations.

• Former Commissioner and Co-Convenor, World Commission for Global Consciousness and Spirituality (2001 - 2006). The purpose of the Commission is to convene eminent global leaders and teachers from diverse disciplines and from diverse cultural, religious, philosophical and spiritual traditions in sustained dialogue between worlds to cultivate higher global wisdom, ethics, and spirituality. The Chair of the Commission is Dr. Ervin Laszlo. Co-Chairs are Dr. Robert Muller and Dr. Karan Singh. Members include H.H. the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Dr. Du Weiming, Sir Sigmund Sternberg, Professor Cornel West, Steven Rockefeller, Jane Goodall, and the Very Reverend James Parks Morton.

• Former Chair, Department of Religions, Barat College, Lake Forest, IL. Former faculty member, Department of Religion, Lake Forest College, and Mundelein College, Chicago, IL. Doctoral work in the History and Literature of Religions, Northwestern University, Evanston IL.