Ingrid Mattson was raised Catholic in Canada, but she didn't feel close to God until she prayed the salat for the first time at age 23.

She embraced Islam. Nearly two decades later, she became the first woman, the first non-immigrant and the first Muslim convert to be elected to lead the Islamic Society of North America.

As she told Newsweek in 2006, the journey as a convert "helps me understand what so many other Muslims and visible minorities go through."

Mattson will bring her North American experience to the On Faith Live discussion on "What it Means to be Muslim in America" at April 19 symposium at Georgetown University.

Mattson, an “On Faith” panelist, is professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations, as well as Director of the Islamic Chaplaincy Program, at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut.

She spent 1987-1988 working with Afghan refugee women in Pakistan. She earned her doctorate in Islamic Studies from the University of Chicago in 1999.

She has written numerous articles exploring the relationship between Islamic law and society, as well as gender and leadership issues in contemporary Muslim communities.

Her forthcoming book, The Story of the Qur'an: Its History and Place in Muslim Societies, will be published by Blackwell Press.