Eboo Patel is founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based international nonprofit that promotes interfaith cooperation. His blog, The Faith Divide, explores what drives faiths apart and what brings them together. He is the author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation. An American Muslim of Indian heritage, Eboo has a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship. He is on the Religious Advisory Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Committee of the Aga Khan Foundation and the Advisory Board of Duke University's Islamic Studies Center. Eboo is an Ashoka Fellow, part of a select network of social entrepreneurs with ideas that could change the world.

Gustav Niebuhr is an associate professor of religion and the media, an interdisciplinary position in the College of Arts & Sciences and the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. Since June 2004, the “On Faith” panelist has directed the Religion & Society Program, an interdisciplinary undergraduate major. Niebuhr served as a visiting fellow/scholar in residence at the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University from December 2001 to 2003. Supported by a Ford Foundation Grant, he conducted research on religious diversity and interfaith collaboration. Prior to his academic tenure, Niebuhr was a national correspondent for The Washington Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, writing feature and analytical articles, and reporting on news about religion. He won several awards, including the 1993 Templeton Religion Writer of the Year Award from the Religion Newswriters Association. His articles have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, the Carnegie Reporter, the Christian Century, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and Beliefnet.com. An experienced public lecturer,Niebuhr most recently spoke at Auburn Theological Seminary in May 2006 on “Is ‘Tolerance’ a Social Good?” and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in May 2005, he lectured on “Religion as News.”

"On Faith" panelist Starhawk is a prominent voice in modern Wiccan spirituality and cofounder of Reclaiming (www.reclaiming.org), an activist branch of modern Pagan religion. She is the author or coauthor of ten books, including The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (1979) --considered an essential text for the Neo-Pagan movement--and the novel The Fifth Sacred Thing (1993) . Her works have been translated into Spanish, French, German, Danish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Greek, Japanese, and Burmese. Many of Starhawk's political essays were collected into her book Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising . Her newest book is The Earth Path: Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature . Starhawk has also recorded several tapes and CDs; most recently Wicca for Beginners (2002), Wiccan Rituals and Blessings (2003), and a four-CD set Earth Magic (2006), all produced by Sounds True. She consulted on and contributed to three films known as the Women's Spirituality series, directed by Donna Read for the National Film Board of Canada: Goddess Remembered, The Burning Times, and Full Circle . Committed to bringing the techniques and creative power of spirituality to political activism, Starhawk travels internationally teaching magic, the tools of ritual, and the skills of activism.

The Reverend William J. Byron, S.J., a former president of Catholic University, is on leave this year from his position as research professor at the Sellinger School of Business and Management, Loyola College in Maryland to serve as president of St. Joseph's Preparatory School in Philadelphia. The “On Faith” panelist served as interim president of Loyola University , New Orleans in 2003-04 and for three years prior to that, was pastor of Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington , D.C. From 1992 to 2000, he taught "Social Responsibilities of Business" at Georgetown University , where he was Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Ethics and served as rector of the Georgetown Jesuit Community. He was president of Catholic University for a decade (1982-92). Byron writes a syndicated bi-weekly column, Looking Around , for Catholic News Service, and is the author of a dozen books, including A Book of Quiet Prayer (2006); The Power of Principles: Ethics in the New Corporate Culture (2006) and Answers from Within: Spiritual Guidelines for Managing Setbacks in Work and Life (1998) . A founding director and past chairman of Bread for the World , Byron was also named the 1999 recipient of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities' Theodore M. Hesburgh Award for his contributions to the advancement of Catholic higher education. In that same year, he received the Council of Independent Colleges' Academic Leadership Award. Byron, who holds a doctorate in economics as well as theology degrees, served in the U.S. Army's 508 th Parachute Infantry Regiment before entering the Jesuit order in 1950. He was ordained a priest in 1961.