Asra Q. Nomani is an author at St. Martin’s Press and a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal. She co-founded the Pearl Project in 2007 as a professor in the practice of journalism at Georgetown University. She is the author of Standing Alone: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam (HarperOne). She has written about trauma, extremism, anti-Semitism and character assassinations for publications including Washingtonian magazine, the Daily Beast, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Washington Post. She has spoken about these issues on NPR, CNN, Fox News and BBC.
THE TEAM
Orli Peter, Ph.D
Co-Director
Orli Peter is a neuropsychologist specializing in the assessment and treatment of trauma survivors. She was a consultant for a terrorism project at Rand. She is a former psychology professor at Mount St. Mary’s University in Los Angeles, where she directed the psychology graduate programs. She travels frequently to the Middle East to help Arab and Israeli women through political and domestic trauma. She assists people who experience character assassinations after they report abuse, and she counsels people to overcome their fear of attacks on their character, so they can report their abuse. She has written about the Holocaust for the Times of Israel.
PEARL PROJECT STAFF
Staff, 2009
Co-Directors:
Asra Nomani
Barbara Feinman Todd
Project Fellows:
Katie Balestra
Kira Zalan
Project Coordinator:
Erin Delmore
Staff, Fall 2008
Co-Directors:
Asra Nomani
Barbara Feinman Todd
Project Fellows:
Katie Balestra
Kira Zalan
Project Intern:
Jessica Rettig
Project Coordinator:
Erin Delmore
Project Volunteers:
Mary Cirincione
Margo Humphries
Jill Phaneuf
Alexandria Shaner
Staff, Spring 2008
Kira Zalan, Managing Editor
Bonnie Rollins, Producer
Margo Humphries, Associate Editor, PearlPedia
Claire Callagy, Photographer
Phil Perry, Videographer
Senior Staff Reporters, Spring 2008
Katie Balestra
Mary Cirincione
Shilpika Das
Rochelle Hall
Karina Hurley
Caitlin McDevitt
Jill Phaneuf
Jessica Rettig
Staff Reporters, Spring 2008
Haya Al-Noaimi
Erin Delmore
Dmitri Ivashchenko
Afgan Niftiyev
Rebecca Tapscott
Clara Zabludowsky
Writing Team, Spring 2008
Fatima Bahja
Sakshi Jain
Alex Joseph
Staff Reporters, Fall 2007
Adil Awadh
Katie Balestra
Rachel Claytor
Erin Delmore
J.P. Finlay
John Gregory
Hammad Hammad
Margo Humphries
Doug Lane
Katherine Major
Caitlin McDevitt
Sean Murphy
Niftiyev, Afgan
Phil Perry
Phaneuf, Mary “Jill”
Bonnie Rollins
Amanda Silverman
Rebecca Tapscott
Kira Zalan
Fellows, 2007-2008
Tony Capaccio
Chris Chambers
Jeffrey Dvorkin
Ron Shafer
Alicia Shepard
RESEARCHERS
Madeleine Steppel
Researcher
Madeleine Steppel is a high school senior. She is a founding member of her school’s Palestinian-Israeli Pact for Peace club, with a mission to support meaningful conversations among students. At a small private school in northern Virginia, she was regularly exposed to anti-Semitism by other students. During her campus visits to over 20 U.S. colleges and universities over the past three years, she has repeatedly observed manifestations of the new anti-Semitism. In college, she intends to study domestic and international politics.
