Speakers

A former believer of 30 years (including a decade as a Christian radio host), Seth ultimately discovered that religion lacked any legitimate answers, especially in the bright light of scientific discovery. Instead of being satisfied with a belief system inherited from family and culture, Seth found greater satisfaction in “thinking” for himself, and he eventually encouraged others to do the same through an online community called The Thinking Atheist. He also recently published a book titled Deconverted: A Journey from Religion to Reason

Jamila is a journalist living in Washington, DC. Born to a Southern Baptist convert to Catholicism and a non-practicing Black Muslim, Jamila has formally renounced her “confused” belief in the supernatural and is now an out and proud Atheist.

Jamila began her career covering government in her hometown of Pittsburgh and moved to DC where worked as an editor and producer for ten years at National Public Radio. She’s been a writer for hire for the better part of the last decade and is devoted to spreading the gospel of Logic, Reason, and Science to all those who may hear. She is a frequent guest of MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes.

Rob Boston is senior policy analyst at for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Rob, who has worked at Americans United since 1987, also serves as assistant editor of AU’s “Church & State” magazine.

Rob is the author of three books: Close Encounters With the Religious Right: Journeys into the Twilight Zone of Religion and Politics (Prometheus Books, 2000); The Most Dangerous Man in America? (Prometheus Books, 1996) and Why the Religious Right Is Wrong About Separation of Church and State (Prometheus Books, 1993; second edition, 2003). His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including Free Inquiry, Liberty, Jewish Monthly and other publications. Boston serves on the board of directors of the American Humanist Association and writes a regular column on church-state relations for The Humanist.

In addition, Boston often serves as a spokesperson for Americans United and has appeared on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper,” Fox News Channel’s “O’Reilly Factor,” NBC’s “Nightly News” and other programs. He has also appeared as a guest on talk-radio shows across the country and is a frequent subject of print interviews.

Representative Mark Cohen is the “Dean” of the Pennsylvania General Assembly — the longest serving member in either the House or the Senate. He was first elected to represent the 202nd District in Philadelphia in a special election on May 21, 1974 and has been re-elected to serve his constituents in every election since.

For seven years, Rep. Cohen served as chairman of the Pennsylvania House Labor Relations Committee. During his tenure, he fought to protect the rights of workers and working families by increasing the minimum wage and by protecting workers’ compensation benefits. He won praise from both the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO and the Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce (now called the Chamber of Business and Industry) for his work on a special task force of labor, business, and legislative leaders that designed the solution to Pennsylvania’s $3 billion unemployment crisis and preserved benefits for Pennsylvania’s unemployed workers. He was the prime mover behind Pennsylvania’s Minimum Wage law and Pennsylvania’s Worker Right to Know Law.

From 1990-2010, Rep. Cohen was elected by his colleagues as the Democratic Caucus Chairman. He currently serves as the Democratic Chairman of the House Human Services Committee where he continues to advocate issues that are important to Pennsylvania’s working families.

Rep. Cohen, born in 1949, is a graduate of Philadelphia Central High School, received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania, a Juris Doctorate from the Widener University School of Law and a Master of Business Administration from Lebanon Valley College. Mark and his wife Mona live in Philadelphia and have one daughter.

James Croft is the Research and Education Fellow at the Humanist Community at Harvard. He is a candidate for an Ed.D in Human Development and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). In his academic work James primarily studies the philosophy of education, and his dissertation – “Free Thinking” – is exploring the nature, importance, and development of intellectual autonomy.

James is a tireless advocate for Humanism: he is an Assistant Editor at The New Humanism (a free online magazine), and the creator of Temple of the Future, a project to infuse Humanism with beauty, passion and dynamism. He believes that society is desperately in need of living communities dedicated to human flourishing and freedom. Greg Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard, described James as “one of the most important young thinkers in the Humanist movement today, and an incredibly eloquent and entertaining speaker.” His speeches have been called “enchanting”, “outstanding”, “inspiring”, “amazing”, “enlivening”, “entertaining”, “eloquent”, and “passionate”.

James grew up on Star Trek, Sagan, and Shakespeare, and is a proud gay Humanist.

Jerry Dewitt’s ministry began at age seventeen. He evangelized the United States and assisted in three Pentecostal churches. Later he held the pastorate of two fundamentalist congregations. After more than twenty-five years of ministry he realized he had become an Atheist. In 2011 he became the first graduate of The Clergy Project and later that year he was appointed to the Directorship of Recovering from Religion. Although Jerry is no longer a minister, his speaking style gives no doubt about where he came from as he is able to slip into his old preaching persona at will.

Jerry recently released his memoir Hope after Faith: An Ex-Pastor’s Journey from Belief to Atheism. Jerry DeWitt was married for twenty-two years, has one son and still lives in rural Louisiana.

JT Eberhard is a former campus organizer and high school specialist with the Secular Student Alliance, author of the blog What Would JT Do?, and has been a contributing author to AtheismResource.com. JT is an accomplished speaker having given plenary talks at Skepticon, the American Atheists National Conference, the SSA Leadership Conference, the American Humanist Association’s National Convention, Dragon*Con, and multiple campuses and community groups all across the country. As a debater, he has paired with other high profile atheists such as Richard Carrier, Victor Stenger, and Matt Dillahunty.

Before joining the SSA, JT was most known as a debater on atheism and LGBT rights and as the co-founder of the Skepticon annual conference. From 2008-2010, JT worked as the organizing team leader for Skepticon 1, 2, and 3. The event would usher in a new format of conventions featuring rock star lineups while allowing people to attend for free. His talk on “Mental Illness and Why the Skeptic Community Should Give a Shit” at Skepticon 4 was a deeply moving an inspiring look inside his life.

JT also co-founded and led the SSA-affiliated Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster at Missouri State. The group would go on to make news on several occasions, often for their unconventional approach to combating religion such as building a cardboard box fort in the middle of campus to counter-protest evangelists or massing on their school’s free speech zone with expletive-bearing signs in response to the school saying bands could not use coarse language.

Fred Edwords began his humanist activism in 1977 as vice president of the Humanist Association of San Diego. He became president the next year, expanded his reach as American Humanist Association West Coast regional coordinator in 1979, and became national administrator for the organization in 1980. He then served for fifteen years as AHA executive director (1984-1999) and twelve years as editor of the Humanist magazine (1994-2006). Edwords subsequently shifted his attention to bringing humanism to a wider public as AHA director of communications. Today he serves as a management and PR consultant to the AHA while heading up the United Coalition of Reason, bringing local group leaders together in cities across the United States and training them in public relations and effective use of the media.

Fred Edwords is also seen as a leader in the broader community of reason. He was the first president (2002-2005) of Camp Quest, Inc., a summer camp for freethinking children, and served in various leadership roles on the staff of the Ohio camp from 1998 to 2008. He has also served on the boards of the International Humanist and Ethical Union and the National Center for Science Education, served as vice president of the North American Committee for Humanism, and is currently a member of the Broader Social Impacts Committee for the Hall of Human Origins at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. In 1980 he was the founding editor of the Creation/Evolution journal—the only publication dedicated to answering the pseudoscientific, philosophical, educational, and legal arguments of creationists—serving as its editor for eleven years. For such work Edwords was recognized in the mid-1980s as Rationalist of the Year by the American Rationalist Federation and as a Humanist Pioneer by the American Humanist Association. He continues as an advisor to the Secular Student Alliance, as a humanist celebrant in the Humanist Society, and as national director of the International Darwin Day Foundation.

“They say if you want to start an argument, talk about religion or politics. Where should we start first?”
Born in poverty on St Louis’ north side, progressive atheist comedian Steve Hill has acquired a lifetime of experience in what it’s like to grow up in America as an African American male.
After graduating high school in 1979, Steve continued in his father and brothers’ footsteps and joined the United States Marine Corps. He served for 5 years, becoming a Sergeant, and moved to Los Angeles to work in the aerospace industry. 7 years later, he became restless for a more exciting endeavor and joined the California Department of Corrections (CDC). He gained insight into the system by working at 2 maximum security prisons for 10 years.

Due to a “slight” disagreement with the CDC, Steve was retrained as a Real Estate Appraiser. He founded his own company, Anaverde Appraisal, in the Antelope Valley (in northern LA county) during the real estate boom of the early 2000’s.

The mortgage meltdown and Wall Street corruption cemented his decision to speak for those in the middle class with no voice, lobbyist or advocacy group. With an extremely keen sense of humor, he hits the stage with a stand up performance that enables people to see relevant issues from a very funny, but
drastically different, perspective.

Along with the 2013 PA State Atheist Humanist Conference, Steve’s freethought performances this year include the American Atheist Convention in Austin,Texas, NAPCON 2013 in San Francisco and the 2013 Lobby Day & Secular Summit.

George Hrab has gained international notoriety in the skeptic community with his award-winning weekly show The Geologic Podcast. Hrab brilliantly serves up the news of the week through sketches, music, and skeptical/free-thinking commentary with a bit of help from a cast of extraordinary characters straight out of his fertile imagination.

A multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, producer, composer, and heliocentrist, Hrab has written and produced six independent CDs; performed for President Clinton; shared the stage with Elton John, Bernie Worrell, and many others; and has traveled across the country both as a drummer for the nationally recognized Philadelphia Funk Authority and as defacto President for Life of The Geologic Orchestra. Humbly following in the footsteps of such icons as Frank Zappa, Mark Twain, Carl Sagan, Will Rogers, and, yes, even Penn & Teller, Hrab has made it a personal quest to improve the cognitive thinking skills of each and every American by reaching them through their funny bones and dancing shoes.

AJ Johnson is vice president & co-founder of Be Secular., a new business specifically modeled to expand and empower the Secular Movement. Offering 5 years of nonprofit development experience, she serves on the board of Recovering from Religion, as the development adviser for Black Atheists Of America, and offers fundraising advice to other secular groups and projects.

AJ was raised Baptist in the “Bible Belt,” a hyper-religious area of the United States. She graduated with honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), gaining valuable leadership experience as a residential advisor (RA) for new students and teaching English to Thai children while studying abroad. Before becoming vice president of Be Secular., AJ served as development director of American Atheists & Assistant Director of Development for Scholarships at UNC.

“Proud Atheist, Bisexual, Black, Feminist, Left-handed, Progressive Woman” (via @HappiestAtheist’s Twitter profile).

“The Internet is the best thing to happen to atheism since Darwin. Atheists, African American or otherwise, know that we are not alone. Furthermore, those of us who can speak up feel a responsibility for those who cannot. We know that it will be a struggle and are prepared” – AJ Johnson

Amanda Knief is a public policy and constitutional expert on religious freedom and civil liberties. Amanda has a JD from Drake University Law School and a BS in journalism and science communication from Iowa State University. She has previously worked as a legal counsel and legislative drafter for the Iowa Legislature and the lobbyist for the Secular Coalition for America.

Amanda Knief is the Administrative Director and In-House Counsel for American Atheists. She coordinates with staff and volunteers to handle logistics, policy issues, and the president’s schedule. Amanda also acts as American Atheists’ human resources manager. Amanda has a new book out as well: The Citizen Lobbyist: A How-to Manual for Making Your Voice Heard in Government

Lauri Lebo has been a journalist for twenty years. As part of an investigative reporting team, she helped solve two civil rights-era murders.

As the York Daily Record’s education reporter, she covered intelligent design’s First Amendment battle. The winner of numerous state and national awards, she lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She is also the author of The Devil in Dover: An Insider’s Story of Dogma V. Darwin in Small-town America

Tracy Lockwood spent her childhood living on the compounds of an isolated religious sect before finding freedom at age eighteen. Her journey took her through evangelical Christianity and years of questioning before she lost her faith and embraced skepticism and atheism. She is now an advocate for the separation of church and state and for the rights of children in religious communities.

Teresa MacBain became a non-believer after more than twenty years of ministry throughout the Deep South. Her ministry experience began early in life, serving along side her father who was a Baptist minister. She taught 4th grade for several years but left the classroom for the pulpit as a Methodist pastor.

Teresa holds the distinction of being the first female graduate of The Clergy Project, a private, invitation-only “safe house” community of current and former ministers who no longer hold the supernatural beliefs of their religious traditions. Teresa has been featured on CNN, NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Talk of the Nation”, USA Today, The O’Reilly Factor, the Huffington Post, and many other TV and print outlets. She was recently awarded the “Atheist of the Year Award” at the 50th Anniversary American Atheists Convention for her work within the freethought community and the Clergy Project.

As a former minister, Teresa brings a broad understanding of the religious lifestyle and its effects on personal wellbeing to the non-theist movement. She’s a dynamic and entertaining public speaker with a heartfelt compassion for those struggling to completely free themselves from their religion.
She is currently the Executive Director for the Humanists of Florida Association.

Joe Nickell, Ph.D. (University of Kentucky, 1987), is Senior Research Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) – an international scientific organization – and investigative columnist for Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

A former professional stage magician (he was Resident Magician at the Houdini Magical Hall of Fame for three years) and private investigator for a world-famous detective agency, Dr. Nickell taught technical writing for several years at the University of Kentucky before taking the full-time position with CSI at its offices at the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, New York.

Utilizing his varied background, Nickell has become widely known as an investigator of myths and mysteries, frauds, forgeries, and hoaxes. He has been called “the modern Sherlock Holmes,” “the original ghost buster,” and “the real-life Scully” (from “The X-Files” ). He has investigated scores of haunted-house cases, including the Amityville Horror and the Mackenzie House in Toronto, Canada. Nickell was an inspiration for Hilary Swank’s role as a miracle investigator in The Reaping (2007).

The Melbourne based singer-songwriter became involved in secular activism over two years ago, despite her father being the president of a local synagogue. Her songs are a passionate response to dogmatic belief, inequality, religious oppression and the idea that only the devout can be grateful and good. She enjoys bringing this usually controversial topic to the public discourse and finds music to be a effective medium for expression and raising awareness. ‘I can say what I think for three minutes without anybody interrupting me.” (Melbourne Times City Weekly)

‘An Atheist Album’ gives a voice to the often underrepresented views of non-religious people, the fastest growing minority in many countries. As one youtube fan wrote, “I can always come home and listen to Shelley remind us all that we have a voice and a movement of our own, and that there is hope for the future.” After performing this year at the ‘Reason Rally’ to a crowd of 25,000 in Washington DC, Segal’s music video for her single ‘Saved’ has gone global.
Segal grew up in a musical household. She began singing at the age of three, then writing and performing at eleven. Joining her father’s Jewish wedding band early on provided her with an ease and enjoyment performing and writing across a broad range of styles including pop, folk, jazz, blues, rock and reggae. ‘Saved’ has been described as “jazz singing with a Caribbean-rock melody.” Intimate, story-telling and biographical lyrics are what unifies Shelley’s song-writing across genres.

Shelley accompanies herself on guitar and has been performing her original music around Melbourne and internationally for the last ten years. She has been teaching vocals, music theory and song-writing for seven years. In 2009 she recorded her first EP, a collection of songs written between 2002 and 2008 with acclaimed producer Josh Abrahams at Fishtank Studios.
In 2010, Shelley completed a Bachelor of Applied Music from the Box Hill Institute of Tafe. The same year she also wrote and recorded a song with world-renowned DJ Carl Cox. The track, ‘Chemistry’ was a drum and bass single from his latest album ‘All Roads Lead To The Dance Floor.’ Segal has performed to crowds with Cox at Stereosonic festival and at the iconic Billboard. In November 2011 a remix of ‘Chemistry’ spent two weeks at number one on the techno charts.

This year Shelley launched ‘An Atheist Album’ which has had sales on every continent but Antarctica (though it’s never too late). She also featured on the album ‘Infidelity’ by London socialite Tara Palmer Tomkinson. Shelley has many other musical ventures underway. Upcoming projects include a jazz and folk covers album with her father on the violin, a folk-pop album of love songs titled, ‘My Whinging Vagina’ and an upbeat indie-folk EP with her partner called ‘Snow Pear.’

President of American Atheists. Dave was the Creator and Executive Producer of the Reason Rally. He has been an atheist since he was a 6-year-old. Dave became an activist in 1996 and soon became New Jersey State Director of American Atheists. He also founded the Alliance of Lucent and AT&T Atheists and Secularists, the first employee club of its kind. He was tapped to be the National Spokesperson in 2004, and then was named Vice President in 2008. The Board of Directors elected Dave as President in September of 2010.

He has appeared on many major news programs including The O’Reilly Factor (spawning the famous “WTF meme-face”), Scarborough Country, The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, CNN’s Paula Zahn NOW, Nick News, Hannity and Colmes, FOX and Friends, NPR’s All Things Considered, and many more.

An acclaimed master of the challenging art of sleight of hand, Jamy Ian Swiss has performed magic throughout the United States for presenters ranging from Fortune 500 companies to the Smithsonian Institution. He has lectured to magicians in 13 countries and made numerous television appearances in the United States, Europe and Japan, including U.S. appearances on CBS 48 Hours, PBS Nova and the PBS documentary The Art of Magic, and Comedy Central. “One of my great satisfactions in being a magician is that it is the most honest living I have ever made,” says Swiss. “As Karl Germain, a world-famous conjurer at the turn of the century, said, “The magician is the most honest of all professionals. He first promises to deceive you, and then he does.”

A founder of the National Capital Area Skeptics and contributor to Skeptic magazine, Swiss lectures to scientific, academic and university audiences about deception and the paranormal on “The Illusion of Psychic Powers.” Why, you might wonder, is a professional deceiver concerned about the misuses of deception? “I want to highlight the line between illusion and reality,” Swiss explains. “The fantasy world I create as a magician is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.”

David Tamayo is president and founder of Hispanic American Freethinkers (HAFree), a national nonprofit educational organization with emphasis on serving the Latino community in the U.S. Mr. Tamayo received his Bachelors degree in Computer Science from George Washington University and his Masters degree in Management in Information Technology from University of Virginia at Charlottesville. He currently serves as Vice President of Technology for large corporation in the Washington DC area.

Mr. Tamayo developed a critical thinking program for English as a Second Language (ESL) students at the high school level. This program is currently being used by some high schools in Northern VA and is in the process of being expanded to other high school systems. He is also one of the producers and conductors of the HAFree podcast (mostly in Spanish) discussing issues of religion in the Hispanic communities and encouraging young Latinos to pursue careers in the “hard” sciences such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, etc.

On other miscellaneous notes, Mr. Tamayo recently testified in West Chester, PA against the removal of the Tree of Knowledge “nativity” display and he is an active supporter and writes extensively on adogmatic freemasonry in the U.S.

Dr. Joe Wenke, author of You Got to Be Kidding! The Cultural Arsonist’s Satirical Reading of The Bible, was born the oldest of eleven children in a strict Catholic family in South Philadelphia and attended a long line of Catholic schools including the University of Notre Dame where he received a B.A. in English. He received an M.A. in English from Penn State and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Connecticut. Dr. Joe’s new book, “Potpourri: The Cultural Arsonist’s Satirical History of the Catholic Church” will be published this spring by Trans Uber.