Education
Gather Together to Share, Learn and Act…

• We will learn about innovative programs that address gender inequality and injustice.
• Presentations on effective local strategies will challenge us in the following areas:
• economic participation,
• community leadership and political expression,
• education, and
• and healthcare and safety.

Alex Counts, USA
Alex Counts, President & Ceo Grameen Foundation. Alex Counts has over twenty years’ experience in microfinance, starting as a Fulbright scholar at Grameen Bank in Bangladesh where he worked and studied under Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, founder and managing director of Grameen Bank.  In 1997, Mr. Counts founded Grameen Foundation, a dynamic nonprofit that, using innovation, technology and research, fights global poverty through a network of microfinance partners in 28 countries in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Mr. Counts chairs the board of Project Enterprise and serves on the boards of Fonkoze USA and the PLAN Fund of Dallas. He serves the Board of Advisors of the Katalysis Bootstrap Fund and the Editorial Advisory Board of Grameen Dialogue. In addition, he serves on the board of Grameen-Jameel Pan Arab Microfinance Limited, an enterprise based on Professor Yunus’ concept of social businesses. Mr. Counts is the author of Small Loans: Big Dreams published in March 2008 and available in the Exhibit Hall for sale and Give Us Credit: How Muhammad Yunus' Micro-Lending Revolution is Empowering Women from Bangladesh to Chicago 1996.  He earned a BA in economics from Cornell University. 

Dr. Kalpana Kannabiran, India
Kalpana Kannabiran, Professor of Sociology at NALSAR University of Law, is a sociologist and legal scholar, whose work over two decades has focused on socio-legal studies and human rights in India.  As founding member of Asmita Resource Centre for Women, she has a wide experience in voluntarism and the NGO sector. She has published extensively on questions of women's rights, social justice and law and has played a major role in policy, having served as General Secretary of the Indian Association for Women's Studies (1998-2000); Member of the Expert Group on the Equal Opportunity Commission, Government of India, in 2007-2008; and being part of the NGO delegation that presented the alternative report on CEDAW [which she edited] to the United Nations in January 2007. A recipient of the Rockefeller Humanist in Residence Award, which took her to Hunter College, City University of New York in 1992-1993, she has also received the VKRV Rao Award for work in Social Aspects of Law from the ICSSR in 2003.

Rev. Pap Maria, Transylvania
Nearly every year since 1994, the Francis Balázs Scholars Program has brought a Unitarian Transylvanian minister to study at Starr King School for the Ministry for a year of study to enhance their parish ministry in Transylvania and their work in the community and the larger church. Pap Maria (Transylvania custom is to use the last name first) was a Francis Balázs Scholars Program participant (2003-2004). She returned to Romania where she became one of the first two women in 40 years to graduate from the Kolozsvar seminary, where all Romanian Unitarian ministers receive their theological education. After her return to Translyvania, Maria became the first female district dean. "It is a great moment not just for me, but for the women in the church," she said. Maria serves two congregations, one in the village of Szentivanlaborfalva, and the other in the city of Kezdivasarhely. She and husband Laszlo have a daughter, Abigel.

Dr. Chris Nielsen, USA
Dr. Christine Nielsen, Professor of International Business & Strategy, holds the Yale Gordon Chair of Distinguished Teaching at the Merrick School of Business, University of Baltimore. She is a recipient of the University System of Maryland Board of Regents' Faculty Award for teaching.  Her interests include international competitiveness, social enterprise development, and cross-cultural management. Nielsen's article "The Global Chess Game…Or Is It Go?" appearing in Thunderbird International Business Review is ranked as one of the top 50 management articles of 2005. Christine is an active member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis (UUCA), a leading UU congregation of the Women’s Rights Worldwide initiative. She is Co-Chair of the UUCA Buhata Pinay (Do It, Filipina!), a model program in the Philippines, working collaboratively with the NGO’s leaders on Negros Island on behalf of women’s development through initiatives to strengthen education, livelihood opportunities, healthcare and safety, and leadership skills. Nielsen was the Fulbright-SyCip Distinguished Lecturer in the Philippines during 2007, the first woman to receive this Award.

Dr. Creamlimon Nongbri, India
Creamlimon Nongbri, Secretary of the Education Committee of the Unitarian Union of North Eastern India was born and grew up in the village of Nongkrem, 14 kilometers from Shillong, capital of the state of Meghalaya in India. She graduated from North- Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong, Meghalaya, India and is presently a teacher at the Department of Education at the University. She has published a number of research papers and belongs to several professional organizations. She is an executive member of the Local Development Committee, Nongthymmai,  Shillong. As a General Secretary of the North East India Education Society (NEIES) she had the opportunity to provide professional services through Family Counselling Centers(a Government of India Sponsored Scheme) to women who are the victims of atrocities. Nongbri has attended IARF Congresses in 1984, 1993 and 1996 and 1999 and was a member of the International Association for Religious Freedom Council for one term.

Dr. Diana Strassmann, USA
Diana Strassmann is the founding editor of Feminist Economics, the journal of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE). She received her undergraduate degree in economics from Princeton and her masters and doctorate degrees in economics from Harvard. She is Professor of the Practice in Rice University's Center for Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Director of the Program in Poverty, Social Justice, and Human Capabilities. She established the journal, Feminist Economics, on behalf of IAFFE in 1994. Feminist Economics promotes dialogue about feminist economic perspectives and publishes research aimed at improving the lives of children, women, and men around the world. Dr. Strassmann has always promoted the work of scholars in developing nations and scholars doing exemplary interdisciplinary work relevant to economics. In 1997, the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) named Feminist Economics the Best New Journal in its international awards competition. Supported generously by Rice University and other major donors, the journal has attracted a wide readership, individual subscribers in over 50 countries and five thousand libraries worldwide.