​    SCCPWR BOARD OF DIRECTORS BOARD





Co-Chair: Debrah Friedland-VanZyl​

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South African born, Debrah Daya Friedland-VanZyl, a board member of the Southern California Committee for a Parliament since 2008, is a Co-founder and Co-director of the innovative  online seminary, All Paths Divinity School. Friedland vanZyl is an Ambassador for the global Parliament of the World's Religions and is on the advisory Board of One Global Family Foundation and Interfaith and Indigenous Women Leaders. She has also been a board member of other interfaith organizations including the Order of Universal Interfaith, The Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Ethics, the Westside Interfaith Committee for a Parliament of World's Religions, Monks without Borders, and the International World Museum of Religions. Debrah has co-created many events and retreats globally and locally including several Seeds of Peace Events in Los Angeles and the Conversations on Pluralism Series. She was Assistant Producer of the Los Angeles 2012 Peace Sunday/Peace Fest for Unity and Diversity World Council.

Co-Chair: Dr. Richard Rose

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Dr. Richard Rose serves as Department Chair and Program Director for the Ecumenical Center for Black Church Studies, La Verne University, California. His current research examines global issues related to Interfaith dialogue and Religious Pluralism.  He is the author of An Interreligious Approach to a Social Ethic for Christian Audiences (2017) and 7 Meditations on the Lord’s Prayer (2016), both published by Christian World Imprints, New Delhi, India.

Dr. Rose also serves as SCCPWR Treasurer.

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Secretary: Eric Kowalczyk

Eric has a national reputation as a dynamic and engaging public speaker. Specializing in crisis communication and leadership strategies, Eric draws on a vast background of real-world and teaching experience to bring a new modality of communicating to varied professional audiences. In addition to his role as a public speaker and educator, he works with clients to achieve their goals.

Eric has trained more than 1,600 communications specialists in 40 states and 65 cities across the country. He has presented at numerous national conferences and is a 2016 TedX BeaconStreet speaker.

As Director of Communications, for the Baltimore Police Department, Eric was at the forefront of the Freddie Gray Riots. Handling local, national, and international media, he focused on transparency and accountability to connect with an already distrustful public.

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Eric is currently studying Interfaith towards a Masters in Divinity Degree from All Paths Divinity School.

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FORMER Co-Chair : Joseph Prabhu​
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Joseph Prabhu is Professor of Philosophy and Religion at California State University, Los Angeles, and has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Berkeley, Chicago and universities in Europe, Asia, and Australia.  Both an internationally-known scholar and peace-activist, he has lectured at more than sixty universities and religious and secular venues around the world. He is a Trustee Emeritus of  the Council of the Parliament of the World's Religions (www.parliamentofreligions.org) and he was the Program Chair of the 2009 Melbourne Parliament.  He was the Past-President of the  International Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy (www.sacp.org) and he serves on the  boards of many journals and as a consultant  to the UN High Commission for Human Rights in Geneva.

Dr. Prabhu is the editor of The Intercultural Challenge of Raimon Panikkar (Orbis Books, 1996) and the two-volume Indian Ethics (Ashgate, 2007, and Springer 2013) and the author of the forthcoming Raimon Panikkar as Modern Spiritual Master (Orbis Books, 2013) and Liberating Gandhi ( Rowman and Littlefield 2014).

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Tahil Sharma

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Tahil Sharma is a Southern California native born to a Hindu and Sikh Indian family. He is a nationally recognized leader promoting religious and secular pluralism, human rights, social justice. Tahil serves as a Religious Director from the Office of Religious Life at the University of Southern California working on local initiatives to promote inter-religious dialogue and community engagement with students of diverse religious and secular backgrounds, with emphasis on South Asian and Hindu students, with support of the Germanacos Fellowship through the Interfaith Youth Core. He also serves as an Interfaith Liaison for Sadhana: The Coaition of Progressive Hindus and the Vice Chair for the Committee on Human Relations for the city of Claremont. He has worked as the Hope Not Hate Campaign and Culturama Coordinator for AMP Global Youth, a project of Americans for Informed Democracy, to create an intercultural, virtual exchange between students in the United States and the Middle East with the support of the Aspen Institute and the US State Department and has served as a Youth Representative to the United Nations DPI NGO for the Parliament of the World’s Religion. Tahil was also recently appointed as the youngest Board Member of the Southern California Committee for the Parliament of World's Religions.

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