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Salwa Amor
Salwa Amor lives in London and works as a war correspondent and broadcast journalist.
Specialising in Middle East affairs she has covered events in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Kurdistan, Tunisia, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, the West Bank and Israel for News Networks including Al Jazeera, BBC, MBC, Current TV, Reuters Thomson, Sky and Euronews. Her Masters was in Creative Media at the University of Bournemouth.
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Judith Mayotte
Long an advocate on behalf of the world’s refugees and internally displaced civilians, today Professor Judith Mayotte focuses her attention on those displaced because of extreme weather events as she lectures and facilitates courses dealing with the imperative of caring for creation in a changing climate.
Before moving to Cape Town, South Africa as Visiting Professor for the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre as well as at The University of the Western Cape, Judith Mayotte was Women’s Chair in Humanistic Studies and Visiting Professor in the Department of Theology at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While at Marquette, she designed and implemented the Marquette University South Africa Service Learning Program. During the years she lived in South Africa, Mayotte was also invited to be the first Desmond Tutu Distinguished Chair in Global Understanding on the University of Virginia sponsored Semester at Sea ship. She was founder and Co-Director of Seattle University’s International Development Internship Program and taught in the History Department at Seattle University. She was an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. She served as a member of the June 1996 Foreign Policy faculty of the Salzburg Seminar. In 1994 she was appointed by the first Clinton Administration to the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration as Special Adviser on refugee issues and policy. Before joining the State Department, she was Chairwoman of the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, and served on the board of Refugees International. Both are well-known advocacy organizations that took Mayotte to the field to assess refugee crisis and repatriation issues. She served on the board of the International Rescue Committee, one of the largest non-sectarian private voluntary organizations in the United States, and was a Senior Fellow of the Refugee Policy Group of Washington, D.C. She also served on the boards of The Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation, the Visionaries Institute, and the Global Ethics and Religion Forum.
She has written extensive reports, articles and editorial pieces, appeared on radio and television, and lectures on refugee and development issues. She has been called to testify as an expert witness before congressional committees concerned with the status of refugees and the direction of U.S. policy regarding the issue, and she has briefed U.S. Government and United Nations officials.
In 1989, through a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Mayotte began research for a book on long-term refugees. Her three year research odyssey took her to the refugee camps of the Cambodians in Thailand and Cambodia, the Eritreans and internally displaced southern Sudanese in Sudan, and the Afghans in Pakistan, working to document their lives and the conditions that have forced so many of the world’s people into refugee status. Orbis Books released her book Disposable People?: The Plight of Refugees in December 1992. Following the book’s publication and until she lost her right leg in an accident in the war zone in southern Sudan, Mayotte continued to travel on fact-finding missions among refugees and internally displaced civilians in many of the African, Asian, and Balkan nations caught up in civil conflict and those hosting refugee populations.
In addition, Mayotte is an award-winning television producer and a teacher. She began her career as an educator in 1961, and her teaching assignments took her to juvenile prisons, and inner city and suburban high schools. She continued in that profession after receiving her Ph.D. in historical theology from Marquette University in 1976.
In 1978 Mayotte joined WTTW, Chicago’s public broadcasting station, as the Director of Research for the News and Current Affairs Division. There she headed research teams for a variety of local and national specials, series, and documentaries.
In 1982 she joined Turner Broadcasting as Senior Researcher and a Producer for the Emmy and Peabody Award winning documentary series Portrait of America. In 1985 she won an Emmy for writing and producing the “Washington” segment of the series. In 1986 she joined the William Benton Fellowships in Broadcast Journalism at the University of Chicago as Associate Director and in 1988 became Acting Director. Judith Mayotte has also worked in the inner cities of Los Angeles, Chicago, Milwaukee, and New York among the homeless and newly arrived refugees.
In 2016 Mayotte received an honorary degree from Marquette University (Milwaukee, WI). In 2014 Mayotte received Loyola University Chicago’s Coffey Alumni Award and an Honorary Doctor of Humanities from St. Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana. In 2009 Mayotte received the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s World Citizenship Award. In 2004, Mayotte was selected to be one of 100 international and national persons featured in the Hall of Everyday Freedom Heroes in the Smithsonian National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 2002 she received Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees from Loyola University of Chicago and Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama. In 1997, she received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Rosemont College in Philadelphia. In 1995 Mayotte received the Marymount Manhattan College Humanitarian Award and Georgetown University’s Learning, Faith, and Freedom Medal. She was featured in one segment of the thirteen-part PBS television series and book, Visionaries, in her role of refugee advocate for Refugees International. In 1994 for her work among refugees, Mayotte received Refugee Voices Mickey Leland Award. In addition, she was honored with the Marquette Alumni All University Merit Award for Professional Achievement, an Honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Seattle University, and Refugees International’s 1994 Award. |
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Dipesh Dutt Sharma
Dipesh Dutt Sharma is the Managing Director (India) at Tutudesk.
Dipesh has an MBA from Drexel University, Philadelphia and spent 17 years of international experience in Information Technology working with the global companies like Ford Motor Company and Sogeti (Capgemini). He has held consulting and leadership roles in Software Development and Delivery, Quality and Learning & Organisation Development. Dipesh is most comfortable working with people and his strengths are leading large programs and cross-functional, multicultural teams.
Dipesh has recently turned to entrepreneurship, working to convert his passions – food, photography and travel – into a viable business. His latest venture is a Pizza Café’ in Bikaner, a small town in Rajasthan, India.
When not baking Pizzas at his cafe, Dipesh will most likely be found catering to the whims of his three and a half year old daughter and once in a while riding his motorcycle in the Himalayas with his camera and iPod for companionship. |