Jenan Mohajir and Rebecca Russo know a thing or two about the importance of bridge-building across seemingly insurmountable divides, in both their personal and professional lives.
Both currently work at Interfaith America, where Mohajir is vice president of external affairs and Russo is vice president of higher education strategy. The two colleagues and friends — Mohajir a Muslim American, and Russo an American Jew — will speak together at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, part of the Interfaith Lecture Series Week One theme of “Potluck Nation: Why We Need Each Other to Thrive: In partnership with Interfaith America.”
At Interfaith America, Mohajir’s work is centered on developing and implementing long term strategic plans, creating innovative programs, and forging collaborative partnerships with philanthropic leaders and foundations. In her 18 years of leadership at Interfaith America, she has trained hundreds of young leaders from diverse backgrounds to foster a vision and practice of civically engaged leadership.
Meanwhile, Russo’s work involves higher education, partnering with colleges and universities to become laboratories where students can deepen and challenge their own worldviews and learn to build relationships across divides. She’s been at Interfaith America for nearly a decade.
Both have spent their professional lives to the work of interfaith cooperation and building bridges across religious divides.
“As we seek to address the harms of both antisemitism and Islamophobia, it is imperative to ground our work within the larger goal of reducing all types of religious, ethnic and other forms of bias and discrimination,” the two wrote in a joint op-ed in USA Today. Mohajir and Russo frequently write and speak on the topic of Jewish-Muslim friendship — a friendship like their own.
“Our friendship and ongoing conversations have illuminated how often our respective communities encounter discrimination and yet, how infrequently those stories are shared within the other community,” the two wrote for USA Today.
