Stephen Sideroff, Director

Dr. Stephen Sideroff is an internationally recognized expert in optimal performance, resilience, neurofeedback and alternative approaches to stress and mental health.  He is the co-founder and Clinical Director of Moonview Treatment and Optimal Performance Center, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA's School of Medicine.  Dr. Sideroff is an original Board member of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Ethics and became its Director in 1991.

Dr. Sideroff has traveled nationally and internationally presenting more than 600 seminars and professional training programs.  He has helped to establish innovative treatment approaches in psychosomatic medicine, optimal functioning and attention deficit disorder in China and Europe, and conducted cutting edge research in brain and behavior at UC Irvine, McGill University in Montreal and UCLA.  His published research using Neurofeedback in substance abuse is a model for applying this innovative approach.  He helped establish the Gestalt Therapy clinic in Los Angeles, and is also the founder and former Clinical Director of Stress Strategies, a hospital based program addressing stress, burnout and psychosomatic conditions at UCLA/Santa Monica hospital. 

Dr. Sideroff has written and produced a number of self-help audio programs aimed at helping individuals develop greater resilience including: Stress control with biofeedback (which has been translated into four languages and has sold over 50,000 copies), Journey into Sleep, Resilience, Peak Performance in Golf, and his most recent, Resilient Living, in which he presents his new and innovative nine component model of resilience. 

Rebecca Tobias, Program Director

Rebecca Gonzalez-Tobias, Program Director of the Institute also serves as a Global Trustee of the United Religions Initiative. As an interfaith educator and and social change activist she designs and facilitates community programming that seeks to foster a culture of peace on a local, national and international level.

In an effort to bring ethics to government and public policy she regularly addresses civic and academic institutions on behalf of Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives, forwarding the agenda outlined in Rabbi Michael Lerner's version of a Global Marshall Plan. Recently introduced to federal legislators on Capital Hill (HR1078) the bill offers practical and substantive legislative steps to expedite the eradication of poverty, homelessness and social inequity in the US and abroad. 

As a fellow at the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva she assisted Special Rappateur Miguel Alfonso Martinez in the drafting of resolutions for the Working Group for Indigenous Populations for the Human Rights Sub-Commission meeting held in August 2005. Rebecca serves as a delegate to the UN's Tripartite Forum on Interfaith Cooperation for Peace and the Committee of Religious NGOs. She resides on the board of the LA-PSR's Non-nuclear Proliferation Committee, Levantine Cultural Center, the Immortal Chaplains Foundation, LA 's planning and coordinating council for the Parliament of the World's Religions, and is a US representative of the Interfaith Encounter Association of Israel/Palestine. 

She has been invited as guest lecturer and presenter on issues of ethics and inter-cultural cooperation at the Palaise de Nations in Geneva, the Global Assembly of the United Religions Initiative in Mayapur India, the IHRC/CIDH UCLA Brain Trust, California State University Northridge, Arlington West and others. Her work has been a concerted effort to build coalitions and to empower citizen advocacy in an effort to improve the lives of all stakeholders on the planet. 

Rebecca attended the University of London in 1984, graduating from Florida International University in 1989 with a degree in Political Science and Comparative Religion. In 1996 she went on to study ethics, culture and mysticism of early Christianity and Islam throughout Turkey with the Catholic Sisters of Notre Dame College. In 2003 she attended the Elijah Interfaith Academy of Jerusalem studying sacred tests of the Abrahamic faiths with Rabbi Alon Goshen-Gottstein who is a founding member of the World Congress of Imams and Rabbis.

Mehnaz-Mona Afridi

Mehnaz M. Afridi has a B.A. and MA in Religious Studies from Syracuse University and has studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Her PhD was on "Mahfouz and Modern Islamic Identity" from the University of South Africa in Religious Studies. She has had a deep interest in Judaism and Modern Jewish Diaspora, and Secular Islamic Identity. Her recent research projects are focused on Europe and Islam, Muslims and Jews in Italian culture; she taught in Rome and participated in a seminar sponsored by the National Endowment of Humanities on "Jews, and Italian Culture" in Venice, Italy. Recently, she was invited by the University of Munich to present her work on "Egypt: A Nexus of Anti-Semitism" in Elmau, Munich. She has recently published an article on "Sacred Tropes: The Qur'an Cruel or Compassionate" published by Brill. Her book project that she is currently working on is on "Shoah through Muslim Eyes". 

She is currently teaching Islam and Judaism, Cultural Diversity, Genocide Studies and Humanities at Antioch University and National University. 

Lynn Crandall, M.A.

Lynn Crandall is Director of the University of Southern California Institute for Genetic Medicine Art Gallery. She holds a Masters Degree from the University of Notre Dame in Secondary Education and has taught Leadership and English Literature and Composition on the high school level in six states for 17 years, serving also as a California Master Teacher. A member of the LA/Nagoya Sister City Association, she serves on the Board of Directors of SoCal Sister Cities and on the LAC+USC Medical Center Art Council. Lynn is Executive Director of artAngels.org, Inc., a San Francisco based nonprofit organization that organizes statewide art-framed forums and curriculum development. She is on the Advisory Board for two California Partnership Academies at Garfield H.S.: International Trade, Transportation & Logistics and Green Architectural Design Academy and is L.A. Project Manager for Focus the Nation and Americans for Informed Democracy. She served the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles as Board of Directors VOTER Editor and as the Coordinator of the 2007 Open World/LWVUS Civic Hosting Program. As Director of the Riordan Leadership Development Program at the Los Angeles Junior Chamber of Commerce (1992-1997), she trained over 400 young professionals in the skills of nonprofit board governance.

Roger Eaton

Roger Eaton is a computer programmer for Princess Cruises. He is on the Board of Unity-and-Diversity World Council in Los Angeles and also a Progressive Action Group Leader with the Westside Progressives.

A lot of his time goes towards coordinating the Los Angeles Nuclear Disarmament Coalition. With the help of a fellow programmer in Uruguay he is developing the "InterMix Group Software" which the Wallenberg expects to use for its 2010 Middle East Peace Dialog. 

Nile El Wardani

Ron Klemp

Ron Klemp, Ed.D. was the Coordinator of Secondary Literacy for the Los Angeles Unified School District in charge of implementation of reading intervention for middle and high schools. He has been a reading teacher and a Dean of Discipline in several schools in Los Angeles before he began coordinating the literacy intervention in L.A.He is currently an instructor at California State University, Northridge in secondary teacher education, and has a middle school advisory curriculum in publication. He was previously on the NMSA Research Committee, and has co-authored three books on reading and literacy including "Building Literacy in Social Studies." 

Ron developed and coordinated the Middle School Peace Institute during the 1990's. He established fourteen Institutes in Los Angeles and helped to create a Peace Institute school in Jackson, Mississippi. Currently he is consulting for literacy intervention and creating cooperative classrooms. He is an instructor at California State University, Northridge, and has taught at National University and at California Lutheran University. His website information can be found at www.3TLiteracygroup.org.

Stephen Krashen

Gerry Owen

Miriam Stein

Shepha Vainstein

Shepha Vainstein MA, LMFT co-founded Salaam Shalom Educational Foundation four years ago after a visit to educational communities in Israel and Palestine convinced her of the critical role that education plays in building interpersonal and intercultural bridges across divides of cynicism and despair. 

Salaam Shalom Educational Foundation promotes conflict resolution training and innovative educational modalities aimed at nurturing the minds and souls of Jewish and Arab children living under the chronic stress of conflict within Israel and her surrounding territories.  Its Palestinian kindergarten teacher education program developed in collaboration with educators and health care professionals from the Occupied West Bank seeks to broaden children’s problem solving skills and provide models for sustained cooperation and community development. 

Ms. Vainstein received her Masters of Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and is a practicing psychotherapist specializing in trauma recovery and personal empowerment. She is a facilitator of Nonviolent Communication and the Way of Council and an executive board member of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Ethics.

Susan Wheeler

Robert Willard

Bob Willard, a fourth generation Californian, was trained as a mechanical engineer at Stanford, BS'47 and the California Institute of Technology, MS'49. He served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army in World War II, active in the European Theater of Operations and in the U.S. Subsequent to completing his education and military service, he founded an independent business to distribute specialized industrial components to industries manufacturing complete machinery, mining enterprises, and ore and scrap processors. He directly managed all operating functions. Following his retirement in the late '90's, Bob joined the nonprofit world. Presently president of the Board of Directors of OPICA, a west Los Angeles day care center for the mentally fragile elderly, which serves persons with dementias, including Alzheimers Disease, and provides professional counseling to their families and caregivers. Bob is a member of the Levantine Cultural Center's Advisory Board. He is an advisor on fund development planning and/or strategic planning for the South Los Angeles LAMP, and the Progressive Jewish Alliance, he is an active member of Leo Baeck Temple, a west Los Angeles liberal Reform Jewish congregation. There he serves on several standing committees including Personnel Committee, Peacebuilders group, and Archival Planning Committee.