Speakers

Before founding UR Action, Joseph served as Mercy Corps’ Acting Director of the Peace and Conflict team and, prior to that, as a Senior Peacebuilding Advisor, helping develop and implement conflict management programs in Guatemala, Iraq, Mali, Myanmar, South Sudan, and Syria. He led the development of the Negotiating for Humanitarian Access Playbook for the humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding communities. Through his affiliation with Vantage Partners, Joseph also conducts interest-based negotiation workshops for Fortune 500 companies and the United States Air Force. 

He completed a Master of Arts in international relations—with concentrations in international economics and conflict management—at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC. Before attending SAIS, he served as an Information Technology staffer and later as the Regional Press Assistant for a presidential campaign. He has also worked as a legal assistant to a private attorney in Evanston, Illinois. Joseph has taught a GMAT course in Mexico, English in Argentina, and U.S. politics in Italy. He earned a B.A. in Political Science and History from Northwestern University. He is fluent in Spanish and conversant in Italian

He also founded the Excellence in Changemaking Institute, which equips social impact leaders with the skills, strategy, and support to lead lasting systems change. Across his work, Cunningham bridges divides and strengthens institutions by helping leaders work across sectors and co-create solutions that translate community priorities into lasting structural change. His approach blends strategic vision with hands-on facilitation, grounded in the unshakable belief that a thriving, pluralistic democracy in the United States is not only possible, but within our power to co-create.

Her work as an actress on television includes Inventing Anna, The West Wing, Nurse Jackie, and Black-ish. Mainstream movies include Philadelphia, The American President, Rachel Getting Married, and Here Today. President Obama awarded Smith the National Endowment for the Humanities Medal. She was the 2015 Jefferson Lecturer. She’s the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, several Obie awards, two Drama Desk awards, the George Polk Career Award in Journalism, and the Dean’s Medal from the Stanford University School of Medicine. She was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize and nominated for two Tony Awards. She’s a University Professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She has several honorary doctorate degrees including those from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Spelman College, Prairie View University, Juilliard, and Oxford.

The Dialogue Project began in 2019 with the support of a number of corporations, including Southwest Airlines, Pfizer, JP Morgan Chase, Bristol Myers Squibb, HPE and others. In that launch year, the Dialogue Project conducted a major study of business leaders to gain insight into how industry can contribute to reduced polarization.  Soon after, results of that research received widespread media coverage in Fortune, The Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, Politico and elsewhere. The following year the program took residence at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

The Dialogue Project has sponsored symposia and generated thought leadership for business leaders and academia worldwide on critical issues facing today’s society. Programming has focused on:

• Mitigating threats of disruptive employee behavior during political campaign seasons (remarks to the Conference Board’s Chief Legal Officers Council and Chief Compliance Officers Council);
• How should corporate leaders engage on social issues (remarks to a conference sponsored by SHRM, the world’s largest organization representing senior human resource executives);
• The New Ideas competition for top-tier college students across the country that challenges them to develop new ideas for businesses that tackle polarization and discourse;
• Risk and rewards of stakeholder capitalism (remarks to a conference at Duke University);
• Civility in the workplace (an ongoing initiative produced by the Dialogue Project in close collaboration with SHRM and the Page Society, the world’s leading association of chief communications officers);
• Managing crises and politics in a polarized world (a full-production crisis simulation exercise at the annual conference of the Page Society).

Prior to founding the Dialogue Project, Bob was vice chair of ICF Next, a worldwide marketing and communications firm. Bob joined ICF as part of that company’s acquisition of PulsePoint Group, a communications management consulting firm Bob founded in 2007.  Earlier in his career, Bob was with DreamWorks Animation SKG as the company’s first head of corporate communications and corporate marketing. Prior to that, Bob lived in New York and was for eight years president and chief executive of WPP’s GCI Group. Before that he held senior positions with Ketchum and Burson.

In 2018, Bob received the prestigious Plank Center “Milestone in Mentoring Award” for a career that prioritized mentoring and “touched the lives of countless public relations professionals.”  In 2019 he received the Page Society’s “Distinguished Service Award,” granted annually to the professional who has “strengthened the role of public relations in business and society” and advanced the state of the corporate communications practice. 

Fowler specializes in large-scale analyses of political and health-related communication—from local media and campaign advertising in particular—in electoral and health policy settings, and her interdisciplinary work on the content and effect of messaging has been published in political science, communication, law/policy, and medical journals. She is also co-author of Political Advertising in the United States, and she has led WMP’s expansion into computational analyses of digital advertising.

Fowler holds a PhD from thye University of Wisconsin, Madison, and graduated summa cum laude with a BA in mathematics and political science from St. Olaf College. Prior to arriving at Wesleyan University, she spent two years as a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan and five years as the Research Director of the University of Wisconsin NewsLab, one of the largest and most systematic local TV tracking projects ever conducted. In addition to her media commentary on election advertising, Fowler has extensive professional experience in conducting survey and focus group research. She also serves on the ABC News Election Night Decision Desk.

To serve on the front lines in his local community, Pearce works with Urban Rural Action as Senior Director of Communications and leader of Uniting for Action in Eastern North Carolina. He amplifies the hope and opportunities of the bridging movement in interviews across national media including Fox News, MSNBC, C-SPAN, and the Wall Street Journal, in columns for USA TODAY, TIME Magazine, and Chronicle of Philanthropy, in coverage by the New York Times, and in testimony before Congress. Pearce has visited all 50 states, loves America and his fellow Americans, and maintains faith that out of many people, one more perfect union can be built together.

Pearce graduated from Duke University and received an MBA from UNC-Chapel Hill. He spent five years working in Washington, DC—in the U.S. Senate and as a national political consultant for Republican presidential and statewide campaigns. Before moving home to North Carolina in 2013, he spent six months in Uganda, Africa where he wrote It’s Time to Listen. That message—printed in dozens of papers across the United States—launched Listen First Project and led thousands to sign the Listen First Pledge—“I will listen first to understand.” In 2017, as division turned to violence, Pearce left his marketing job to go all in on saving our country from tearing apart, launched the #ListenFirst Coalition, and co-created the first annual National Week of Conversation.

Previously, Dr. Gottlieb served as the FDA’s deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs and, before that, as a senior advisor to the administrator of the centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where he helped implement the Medicare drug benefit, and advance policies to improve healthcare quality and promote the effective use of new medical technologies. Fortune magazine has recognized Dr. Gottlieb as one of the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” and TIME magazine named him as one of its “50 People Transforming Healthcare.”

Dr. Gottlieb is a contributor to CNBC and CBS News Face the Nation, and the author of the New York Times best-selling book Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic. He is a physician and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Dr. Gottlieb holds a BA in economics from Wesleyan University, received the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2019, and was named an honorary doctor of science in 2021.

Heen specializes in particularly difficult negotiations – where emotions run high and relationships are strained. She is also a co-author of two New York Times bestsellers, Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most (with Douglas Stone and Bruce Patton, 2nd ed Penguin 2010) and Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well (Even When It’s Off-Base, Unfair, Poorly Delivered, and Frankly, You’re Not in the Mood) (with Douglas Stone, Viking/Penguin 2014). She has written for the Harvard Business Review, and the New York Times as a guest expert, and as a Modern Love columnist. Heen is a graduate of Occidental College and Harvard Law School. She is schooled in negotiation daily by her three children.

She has been featured on the inaugural Eames Institute Curious 100 List, recognized as a Next Avenue Influencer in Aging, and is a recipient of the James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award for advancing innovative and effective solutions to California’s most significant issues. She serves on the steering committees of Voices for National Service and More Perfect’s Democracy Goal on National Service & Volunteering, the Milken Institute’s Future of Aging advisory board, and the Journal of Intergenerational Relationships editorial board.

Under Patel’s leadership, Interfaith America has grown into a $20 million-per-year organization that partners with governments, universities, businesses, and civic organizations to transform faith into a bridge of cooperation rather than a barrier of division.

Patel’s impact extends to serving on President Obama’s Inaugural Faith Council, delivering hundreds of keynote addresses, and authoring five influential books, including We Need to Build: Field Notes for Diverse Democracy. A Rhodes Scholar and Ashoka Fellow, Patel earned a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University.

Rabbi David has studied at Columbia University (BA), The Jewish Theological Seminary (BA), Yakar, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (MHL and Rabbinic Ordination), and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2015 he completed a second Smikha/Ordination with Aleph: Allliance for Jewish Renewal in the lineage of his beloved teacher and friend Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi z'l.

He has been a visiting instructor in Wesleyan’s religion department where he has taught Religion 474SP Talmudic Stories: Snapshots of Rabbinic Fantasy, Imagination, and Theology. He has also taught in Wesleyan's College of the Environment and lectured in other academic departments.

Rabbi David’s academic interests include: Hassidut, the evolutionary development of Judaism, and new methodologies and pedagogy for inter-religious and interfaith dialogue.