The Emerging Leaders team is delighted to announce our 2025-2026 Interfaith Innovation Fellows!
This cohort of 10 outstanding interfaith leaders will convene over the next year to leverage their collective knowledge to meet a need in their community using an interfaith lens. Together, they will participate in a series of online trainings led by experts and seasoned leaders across America, as well as an in-person retreat in downtown Chicago.
We are incredibly proud of this cohort’s shared commitment to engaging difference, their bold vision for a collaborative and just future, and their dedication to community service.
Our Innovation Fellows were selected from Interfaith America’s Emerging Leaders Network because of their proven commitment to constructive interfaith cooperation and demonstrated ability to make meaningful and longstanding impact in their communities.
You can learn about each of our Innovation Fellows below.
Alison Avigayil Ramer
Peace Activist and Interfaith Leader
Project: Social Change Sanctuary
Alison Avigayil Ramer is an activist and interfaith leader with more than 20 years of experience in collective healing, community organizing, advocacy and fundraising. At the heart of her calling is a commitment to tikkun olam—the repair of what is broken—and a vow to serve others by trusting in the power of spiritual practice to awaken compassion, justice, belonging and liberation. Her theory of change is based on the idea that we cannot truly transform unless we have allowed ourselves to mourn. By creating spaces where grief is welcomed and held, she helps nurture resilience, renewal and the possibility of collective transformation.
Born in New York City and raised in Seattle, Alison comes from Jewish, Christian, and Buddhist family lines. As a young adult, she moved to Israel and Palestine, where she spent more than 15 years supporting community-led resistance and advancing human rights policy in partnership with the UN, EU and global technology platforms.
In response to the grief following Oct. 7, 2023, she founded the Social Change Sanctuary, an interspiritual space that supports individuals and communities in building resilient and regenerative spiritual life. Alison Avigayil is both a teacher and student of change makers, spiritual leaders and sacred companions. She is currently studying in the lineages of Shomeret Shalom, earth-based Judaism, Chumash indigenous traditions and interfaith practice.
Project: “All of the Above” Documentary
Allison Walsh
Independent Documentary Film Director and Fine Artist
Project: “All of the Above” Documentary
Allison Walsh is an independent documentary film director, fine artist and founder of the Big Picture Peoria Film Festival. Walsh’s work amplifies underrepresented voices and explores the complexities of identity, culture and spirituality in the Midwest. Walsh has been a cinematographer and producer on documentaries for ESPN+, Discovery+, Magnolia Network and numerous independent films. Walsh’s first feature documentary, “All of the Above,” takes an exclusive look into the constitutionality of teaching about religion in a public high school (at Walsh’s former school). The film is in association with Kartemquin Films in Chicago and is set to release in 2026. Walsh is a PBS Ignite fellow and holds a BFA from Bradley University in Painting, Spanish and Philosophy.
Lily Qi
Filmmaker and Journalist
Project: “All of the Above” Documentary
Linghua (Lily) Qi is a Chicago-based filmmaker and journalist with a passion for visual storytelling that reflects human interests and social issues. She was a 2024 Center for Asian American Media fellow, a 2020 Prism Photo Workshop grantee, a finalist for the Film Independent Documentary Producing Lab in 2024 and a semi-finalist for the Sundance Humanities Sustainability Fellowship in 2022. She has received fellowships from Free Spirit Media and City Bureau in Chicago for her journalism work. The reporting series she worked on at City Bureau was a finalist for the Peter Lisagor Awards for Exemplary Journalism in 2020.
Their documentary, “All of the Above,” explores the transformative power of religious literacy in a high school setting. The film follows one class of diverse students — from Hindu, Muslim, Catholic, Atheist and Buddhist beliefs — as they navigate their identities in a World Religions class taught by John Camardella, a passionate and unconventional teacher. This project addresses complex questions around religious understanding, identity and tolerance in contemporary society.
Jamari Michael White
Spiritual Visionary and Social Entrepreneur
Project: Roots of Belonging
A former mental health therapist turned spiritual visionary and social entrepreneur, Jamari was inspired by his own struggles with depression and the heartbreaking loss of two gifted brothers in his community to suicide to found Sons of Spirit. He is on a mission to support millions of Black men in freeing themselves from spiritual bondage and transforming the systems that wound the soul through the use of Black spiritual and ancestral wisdom. Jamari is a gifted prophet, leader, seer, teacher, healer and artist. A lover of God and descendant of spiritual leaders and healers on both his maternal and paternal sides, he carries a rich legacy of ancestral wisdom encompassing numerous spiritual and healing practices. He is also a certified transformation coach, ancestral medicine practitioner and ministerial student.
Jamari’s project, Roots of Belonging, is a healing program that integrates the practice of Family Constellation with contemplative dialogue and ancestral wisdom. This project emerged from a growing hunger in his community: Black men and others who are deeply seeking sacred space to explore how their inherited stories – spiritual, cultural, and familial — shape their understanding of belonging, identity, faith and spirituality, and to address division within and outside of our communities created by ancestral and cultural spiritual wounds.
Jessica Moss
Interfaith Organizer and Academic, Executive Director of Interfaith Youth Alliance
Project: Interfaith Youth Alliance’s Faith Forum
Dr. Jessica Spence Moss is an interfaith activist and academic, as well as a daughter, wife, and mother. She earned her Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University in the Cultural Studies in 2023 and was the recipient of an AAUW American Fellowship as well as a CGU Transdisciplinary Studies grant for her work on interfaith communities. Jessica has worked closely with the Orange County Interfaith Network and councils since 2012, was the Assistant Director of Interfaith Programs at CSU Long Beach for the 24-25 academic year, supports interfaith work at USC, currently serves as the Interfaith Faculty Fellow at CSU Fullerton and has served as the Executive Director of Interfaith Youth Alliance since 2021.
The Interfaith Youth Alliance (IYA) in Southern California has long engaged high school students in interfaith dialogue, with their signature program being the annual Faith Forum. In 2026, with the support of the Interfaith America Interfaith Innovation Fellowship program, Jessica will support IYA youth leaders in planning and hosting the 19th Faith Forum. The goal is to bring together 150+ high school students from diverse racial, cultural, and religious backgrounds for interfaith conversations and service grounded in an interfaith ethic. Through this fellowship, Jessica will be able to equip student leaders to address complex and often polarizing topics—such as politics, Israel/Palestine, LGBTQ and women’s rights, immigration, and access to education—while exploring how these issues intersect with race, culture, spirituality, and identity.
Max Yeshaye Brumberg-Kraus
Interdisciplinary Artist
Project: Gender and Spirituality Journey Workshops
Max Yeshaye Brumberg-Kraus (MFA, MA) is a Twin Cities, Minn.-based, interdisciplinary artist practicing drag, theatre, poetry, ritual arts, creative scholarship and public theology. Grounded in comparative literature, theological studies, theatre/dance somatics and feminist/queer poetics, Max uses art to foster pluralism, investigate moral ambiguity, explore mysticism, expand conversations on gender and sexuality, and (re)engage traditional spiritual practices in their own Jewish community, in the broader LGBTQ community and across lines of religious (and non-religious) difference.
Max’s project, Gender and Spirituality Journey, is a sustained, multi-session workshop series that partners with congregations in the Twin Cities on the topic of gender and sexuality in the individual spiritual and communal lives of the participants. Developed so participants would not be stuck in the fear of “saying the wrong thing” and “sounding ignorant” – and generally to tackle gender less as an ideology and more from a space of personal, communal, and spiritual formation – the workshops use dance, theatre, body-work, and contemplative and free-writing techniques to explore their individual and communal gender and spirituality journeys from an embodied perspective.
Michael Reed
Executive Director of Massachusetts Interfaith Power & Light
Project: Sustainable Faith Storytelling Initiative
Rev. Michael Reed is the Executive Director of Massachusetts Interfaith Power & Light (MassIPL), where he leads statewide efforts to equip and mobilize faith communities for climate justice and environmental sustainability. He is an ordained Elder in the United Methodist Church, and holds graduate degrees from the University of Edinburgh (M.Th.) and Princeton Theological Seminary (M.Div.), where he received the Frederick Buechner Prize for Writing. Early in his career, Michael founded The Maker’s Place in Trenton, NJ, where he built a network of hundreds of houses of worship working together to support families with young children experiencing poverty. He is committed to collaboration among people of faith to bring about transformative social change and finds resonance wherever the common good is the common goal. Michael lives in Andover, Mass., with his wife and their two precocious young children.
Through the Interfaith Innovation Fellowship, Michael will launch ”Sustainable Faith,” a new interfaith storytelling initiative from Massachusetts Interfaith Power & Light. The project will feature essays and short videos from emerging voices across Massachusetts, sharing personally how their faith or religious experience calls them to act on climate change. This growing collection will form part of a larger narrative framework for interfaith dialogue and coalition-building, rooted in an intentionally religious paradigm. It will live on MassIPL’s redesigned website and circulate to a wide audience through newsletters, social media, and partner networks—articulating a shared storyline that enables diverse communities of faith to remain centered in their own traditions while finding common cause and strengthening interfaith climate action in New England.
Nia Alvarez-Mapp
Senior Organizer for Common Cause NY and Rank the Vote NY
Project: The Dignity Project
Nia Alvarez-Mapp is a dedicated advocate for causes including voting rights, labor equality, education, and food security. She currently serves as the Senior Organizer for Common Cause NY and Rank the Vote NY. Previously, she was the Organizing Director for the New York Equal Rights Amendment and also worked with Common Cause as their Rank the Vote Organizer, where she developed strategies and educated candidates and community-based organizations about Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). Nia also served as the Manhattan Political Director for Kathy Hochul’s 2022 gubernatorial campaign. Her primary research interest lies in Political Theology and the influence of religious contexts on voting behavior. This focus is evident in her master’s thesis from Union Theological Seminary, titled “CAMPAIGNS 20:16–20: The Ethical Boundaries of Evangelization from Sacred to Secular.”
The Dignity Project is a justice-centered initiative committed to reimagining charity as dignity-driven care. Its mission is to center marginalized communities within civic, spiritual, and cultural spaces, restoring agency, joy and dignity to underserved populations in New York City and beyond. Guided by this vision, the project seeks to build a replicable model of interfaith and community-based care that goes beyond temporary aid and instead fosters lasting empowerment. One of its cornerstone initiatives is the Community Toy Store, designed to uplift and connect the East Harlem community during the holiday season. Originating from a small Christmas gathering for children in the Clinton Housing Developments, the effort has since grown into a collaborative project led by a diverse group of local residents.
Rose Sall
Creator of The Spirits in Me
Project: The Spirits in Me
Rose’s journey begins at the intersections of identity, faith, and education. As a first-generation Senegalese American Muslim woman, she has always navigated multiple worlds — learning how to bridge differences while carving out space for authenticity and belonging. That personal experience grew into a professional calling: helping others build understanding across lines of culture, faith, and history. Her academic path reflects this commitment. At Queens University of Charlotte, Rose studied Human Services with a focus on Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution, where she began exploring the power of dialogue to transform communities. She later earned her M.S. in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution from Columbia University, where she deepened her expertise in conflict transformation, facilitation and justice-centered education.
Now, as the creator of The Spirits in Me, Rose weaves together her experiences in conflict resolution, interfaith leadership and storytelling. Her work is guided by a simple conviction: that courage and creativity can help people face inherited pain and move toward collective healing. The Spirits in Me was created from these questions: how do we carry the histories, struggles, and faith traditions of those who came before us, and how do those legacies shape the way we live, believe, and heal today? At its core, the project gives young people tools to name and make sense of inherited stories.
Generational trauma, religious memory and cultural identity are often heavy to carry, yet young adults rarely have spaces to process them with care. The Spirits in Me creates such a space by blending creativity, dialogue and reflection.
Sravya Tadepalli
Deputy Executive Director of Hindus for Human Rights
Project: Hindus for Human Rights Interfaith Events
Sravya Tadepalli is the deputy executive director of Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR), an organization that advocates for democracy and social justice from a Hindu faith perspective. She has been a board member of Hindus for Human Rights since 2020, leading several initiatives such as the creation of HfHR’s annual progressive Hindu calendar, state and local legislative advocacy efforts in Oregon and Massachusetts, and Hinduism 101 training development for the U.S. Department of Justice. Her writing on Hindu nationalism and the work of Hindus for Human Rights has been published in The India Forum, Scroll, and American Kahani. She is a 2024 graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Master’s in Public Policy program and a 2018 Harry S. Truman Scholar. She currently lives in Oregon.
Through this fellowship, Sravya will support Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR) members as they organize interfaith events in their local communities. With a particular focus on engaging diverse South Asian civic and faith groups, Sravya’s project seeks to improve interfaith relations between Hindus and other South Asian religious communities, empower HfHR members to become interfaith leaders, and create the conditions for interfaith South Asian community organizing.
