Angela Mahoney is a VIDES volunteer in Ethiopia. She is there teaching Communications and English, and on Sundays she helps the Salesian sisters with the Oratory for children.
Jesuit Fr. Julian S. Das is the former was the editor of The Herald, the weekly of the Calcutta archdiocese weekly, and former director of the Jesuit-managed Chitrabani, founded in 1970 in Kolkata as the first media center in eastern India. He is a correspondent for Matters India, a news portal that collaborates with GSR and focuses on religious and social issues.
Tara García Mathewson is a freelance reporter based in Boston. Her work has focused on education, immigration, public housing, and community news. García Mathewson completed her undergraduate degree at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. She has produced award-winning work for the Kitsap Sun in Bremerton, Washington, and the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago. She started freelancing in 2013 and has written for a number of magazines, newspapers and online outlets since then.
Maria Montemayor holds a BA in English and political science from the University of Toronto. She ministers to youth and young adults through her parish and resides in Scarborough, Ontario.
Kelly Litt is a 2014-2015 Dominican Volunteer serving with the Dominican Leadership Conference NGO to the United Nations in New York City. She graduated summa cum laude from Ohio Dominican University with a degree in history and minor in peace and justice. At the United Nations she works on a variety of global issues including peace and security, women and girls’ issues, migration and human trafficking.
Margaret Galiardi, is a Dominican Sister from Amityville, New York, whose passion is the contemplative integration of justice and peace for people and planet. She is a “lover of the wild,” a spiritual director and workshop and retreat leader who has lectured nationally on the New Cosmology and the Christian Story. She spent a year living with the Trappistine monks in their monastery on the Lost Coast of Northern California in the Redwood Forest.
Saji Thomas is a freelance journalist based in Bhopal. He has worked for several mainstream newspapers, such as The Times of India. He writes regularly for Matters India, a news portal that collaborates with GSR and focuses on religious and social issues.
Laura Hammel is a member of the Sisters of St. Clare, a Poor Clare community in Saginaw, Michigan. In addition to the prayer ministry in her diocese, she has developed and maintained a website introducing different prayer forms useful at certain times of the year. These include an Advent calendar, contemplation using Stations of the Cross, a Pentecost Novena and Mysteries of the Rosary.
Jose Kavi is the editor-in-chief of Matters India, a news portal started in March 2013 to focus on religious and social issues in India. He had headed the India operations of Union of Catholic Asian News (UCAN) for 25 years until his retirement in 2012. He began his journalism career in 1982 after leaving the Society of Jesus as a scholastic (seminarian). He had worked with South Asian Religious News and United News of India, a national secular news agency, before joining UCAN. He is married and lives in New Delhi with his wife, son and daughter.
After raising three sons and enjoying her profession as a school librarian, Hildegard became a contemplative Redemptoristine nun in 2000. Her community shares a monastery with Carmelite nuns in Beacon, New York. Her writings have been published in Review for Religious, Cistercian Studies Quarterly and the journal of her international order, the Order of the Most Holy Redeemer (OSsR). She blogs at Contemplative Horizon.