Founder and Board Chair

TED speaker Dr. Georgette Bennett is an award-winning sociologist, widely published author, popular lecturer, and former broadcast journalist. An innovative and entrepreneurial leader, she is an active philanthropist focusing on conflict resolution and intergroup relations.

In 2013, Dr. Bennett founded the Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees, now Multifaith Alliance (MFA) and currently serves as its Board Chair. In 1992, she founded the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, the go-to organization for combatting religious prejudice.

Dr. Bennett is a co-founder of the Global Covenant of Religions/Global Covenant Partners, which focuses on delegitimizing the use of religion to justify violence and extremism. To that end, she served in the U.S. State Department Religion and Foreign Policy initiative’s working group on conflict mitigation, tasked with developing recommendations for the U.S. Secretary of State on countering religion-based violence.

She is Immediate Past Chair of the Jewish Funders Network and serves on the Board of Third Way. In addition, she is an Advisory Board member for the International Rescue Committee and the Milstein Center for Interreligious Dialogue at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Dr. Bennett was a winner of a 2020 AARP Purpose Prize for her work with MFA. In 2021, she was selected as one of Forbes’ 50 over 50 Women of Impact.

Board of Directors

As Chair, Dr. Georgette Bennett leads MFA’s dedicated Board:

• Dr. Malaz Atassi
• Dr. Yahya Basha
• Martin Kalin, Secretary
• Dr. Abdalmajid Katranji, Treasurer
• Dr. Leonard Polonsky CBE
• Jonathan Wiesner