Dr. Albert Celoza, Executive Director has served as faculty in World Religions and Political Science since the 1980’s at Phoenix College, Thunderbird School of Global Management and Arizona State University. He is a faculty fellow of the Brandeis University ENACT – The Educational Network for Active Civic Transformation, The International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life. He has been recognized for excellence in teaching and was awarded the Arizona Professor of the Year in 2001 by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He holds degrees in the humanities, religious studies, political science, and public administration. Dr. Celoza completed Applied Compassion Training (ACT) at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University Medicine. Dr. Celoza’s travels have taken him to France to study with the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh at Plum Village, to the Middle East to study Biblical Archaeology, to Morocco to learn about Islam, and to various pilgrimage, religious sites and shrines. Dr. Celoza has been a long time member of AZIFM. He has partnered in significant ways to further the mission of AZIFM in 2009 when he was on a sabbatical, which included participation in AZIFM’s workshop at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Melbourne, Australia. For more than 15 years he led Phoenix College Liberal Arts and established programs related to citizenship and civic engagement, and international studies. In addition to mentoring students, he funded scholarship endowments to support students in the sciences and international studies. Dr. Celoza served as president of the United Nations (UNA-USA) Phoenix & Arizona and is currently Board President of the Asian Pacific Community in Action. Among his published works is the book Ferdinand Marcos and the Philippines: The Political Economy of Authoritarianism (Praeger, 1997).