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Rais Bhuiyan

Rais Bhuiyan

Founder & President

Rais is a peace activist and an IT professional. After graduating from Sylhet Cadet College, a prestigious military boarding School in Bangladesh, he joined the Bangladesh Air Force and was commissioned as a pilot officer following two and a half years of vigorous training. He received a BS in Aeronautics from the National University in Dhaka and completed numerous information technology courses in New York and Dallas where he continued his education, taking courses in computer system engineering,Show More

    programming, and database administration. In the days following 9/11, Rais was shot by a white supremacist in a brutal hate crime. He forgave his attacker and eventually led an international campaign trying to save him from death row. From this movement and the manifestation of his deathbed promise, Rais founded the non-profit World Without Hate (WWH). His work focuses on utilizing the transformational power of personal narrative and empathy education to help prevent and disrupt hate and violence.

    In addition to his work with World Without Hate, Rais is a renowned international public speaker, engaging hundreds of thousands globally. From corporate boardrooms to college campuses, conference auditoriums, maximum-security prisons, and refugee camps, Rais shares his remarkable story of resilience, survival, and the transformative power of mercy and forgiveness. His talks inspire and motivate diverse audiences, covering topics such as empathy, resilience, forgiveness, healing and reconciliation, combating extremism, race relations, social justice, islamophobia, and leadership.

    Rais donated his story, chronicled in The True American: Murder& Mercy in Texas; the 2014 New York Times Book Review Notable Book and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year. His story is chronicled in an episode of the Emmy-nominated documentary The Secret Life of Muslims.

    More recently, in September 2022, Rais was honored with an invitation to speak at the White House’s bipartisan United We Stand Summit. This notable recognition included a personal letter from President Biden, expressing deep appreciation for Rais’ dedicated efforts in combating hate-fueled violence and transforming his pain into purpose. He worked with the Obama Administration’s Domestic Policy Council, receiving a personal letter from the President thanking him for his courage and efforts. And he continues to serve on the U.S. Department of State’s speakers’ bureau, supporting efforts for peace and understanding. Rais was invited numerous times to represent WWH and had an opportunity to speak with the President and staff members about WWH’s commitment to participating in and supporting the new Office of Gun Violence Prevention and its vital initiatives. He continues to work with various organizations, activists, gun violence survivors, victims’ families, and the Office of Gun Violence Prevention.

    Rais is the host and coproducer of a feature length documentary, Pain and Peace. He travelled 17,000 miles across North America, capturing the powerful stories of survivors and perpetrators of hate-fueled violence. He delivered a TEDx at Emory University in 2016. His anti-hate contributions have been widely recognized, receiving such acknowledgements as the Excellence for Human Service Award (United for Change); 2011 American of the Year (Esquire Magazine); 2014 American Heritage Award (American Immigration Council); 2014 Human Relations Award (Muslim Public Affairs Council Foundation); 2018 ADL Concert Against Hate Honoree and Kay Family Award, among others. World Without Hate is the recipient of Seattle’s Human Rights Commission’s 2021 Human Rights Organization award.

Mark Wright

Mark Wright

Mark is an award-winning anchor for KING 5, the NBC affiliate in Seattle, Washington. He is a four-time Emmy winner for his work as a documentary producer, anchor and reporter.

Mark was born in Seattle but raised on his family’s organic vegetable farm in Whatcom County. Mark started working in the fields in grade school – weeding, cultivating and irrigating the crops. He and his family cut their own wood for heat and raised their own livestock. Growing up on a farm taught Mark the value of hard work. It also instilled in him a love of locally-grown food and a sustainable lifestyle.Show More

    Mark attended Ferndale High School and Washington State University. At WSU, he fell in love with broadcasting and his future wife. Mark’s professional broadcasting career began while attending the Murrow College of Communication at WSU. He worked as a reporter and anchor for the university-owned public radio station. Attending the same college that legendary journalist Ed Murrow attended has always served as an inspiration to Mark. Throughout his career he has tried to apply Murrow’s commitment to integrity and innovation to every position he’s held. Mark graduated from WSU in 1989 with a BA in Communications and a minor in Business Administration.

    Mark’s early career was in Public Radio. He worked as a legislative correspondent for KBSU-FM in Boise, Idaho. He later worked as a reporter for Spokane Public Radio. In Spokane, Mark transitioned from public to commercial broadcasting at KXLY Radio/TV. In seven years, Mark rose from a radio “board operator” (fancy name for button-pusher) to evening television news anchor. In 1998, Mark left Spokane to anchor the morning news for KSTU Television in Salt Lake City. In 2003, Mark returned home to Seattle to work as an evening news anchor, first for the Fox affiliate and now NBC.

    Mark is the Immediate Past President and a board member of the Rotary Club of Seattle — the 4 th -oldest and one of the largest Rotary clubs in the world. Mark led the club of 450 members from June of 2017 through June of 2018. Rotary is a service organization that works to improve the lives of those in need at home and around the world. Mark also dedicates many hours a month volunteering his time as an emcee for non-profits, including — Growing Veterans, Food Lifeline, Bloodworks Northwest, American Red Cross, Plymouth Housing and various hospice organizations.

    Mark’s philosophy on life is to keep an open mind, learn something new every day and bring understanding to the issues he covers for the people of western Washington. Mark is married to his college sweetheart Jamie and has two boys. He loves working in the “big city” but feels most at home walking the fields in Ferndale that his great grandparents settled more than a century ago. In his spare time, you’ll find Mark playing the drums, golfing and practicing Jiu Jitsu.

Deeyah Khan

Deeyah Khan

Deeyah Khan is a two-time Emmy award winning and four-time BAFTA nominated documentary filmmaker. Through her work she has explored how people are drawn to violent extremist movements. She has spent years filming extremists, convicted terrorists, former jihadis, as well as current and former white supremacists and domestic terrorists, Show More

    including armed militia groups in America for her documentaries. Deeyah is also the founder of Fuuse, an independent media, education and arts production company. In 2016, she became the first UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for artistic freedom and creativity.

Dr. Tyrone W A Grandison

Dr. Tyrone W A Grandison

Dr. Tyrone W A Grandison is the Board Chairman of The Data-Driven institute, which is a public health non-profit that helps policymakers create and implement effective programs and policies to solve their most critical problems, using the knowledge of the community, data and technology. Dr Grandison is also a 2018 Zhi-Xing Eisenhower Fellow. a Political Partner of the Truman National Security Project, and a Human Rights Commissioner for the city of Seattle. Dr Grandison was the Vice President of Data for U.Group, which is a result-oriented and high-impact consulting firm that is dedicated to providing innovative and cost-effective solutions to its federal and commercial customers. Show More

    Dr. Grandison was the first-ever Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. Dr. Grandison also advises the Government of Jamaica on their Information Technology strategy - as a member of the National Information and Communications Technology Advisory Council (2016-18). He was the Deputy Chief Data Officer (dCDO) at the US Department of Commerce (2015-16), where he co-founded the Commerce Data Service - a data startup within the Department that supported its twelve bureaus - and led the successful rollout of its first 15 products. He was also a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow (2014-15) working with the US Department of Labor and the US CENSUS Bureau on their data and API (application programming interface) initiatives. He was the CEO of Proficiency Labs International, which specializes in supporting organizations design, build and evaluate privacy and security solutions for their systems. He was one of the managing partners of METIS, Inc. - a services company that specializes in solving organizational problems. He co-founded woyhd.org, a service to help consumers determine the privacy awareness of mobile healthcare apps. He is the co-founder of Hipaantrepeneurs, a service to help healthcare professionals with compliance with healthcare law. He was one of the founding chairs of the Diversity in Privacy and Security Seminar (Di-PaSS) series, which seeks to increase the number of minority professionals and researchers in the privacy and security space. He is a founding partner of Wonder Women Hacks, which is a hackathon dedicated to increasing the number of women in tech, providing a support system for female technologists and helping to solve issues relevant to women. He is a founding partner of Hacks for Humanity (a collaboration with Arizona State University's Project Humanities), which seeks to develop technology to reconnect people to their humanity. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Technology in Kingston, Jamaica. Dr. Grandison was the CTO/co-founder of EqualityTV, where he led the platform and technical strategy initiatives.

    Dr. Grandison has over 25 years experience in software engineering, security and privacy. His work in database security and privacy has been internationally recognized as pioneering and impactful. In addition to relational data privacy and security, he has created and successfully led research and product initiatives in RFID data management, privacy-preserving mobile data management, private social network analysis, text analytics and healthcare management systems.

    Dr. Grandison’s career started as a software engineer in Jamaica. He received a B.S. degree in Computer Studies (Computer Science and Economics) from the University of the West Indies in 1997, a M.S. degree in Software Engineering in 1998 and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine in London (2003).

    Dr. Grandison is a 2018 AAAS-Lemelson Invention Ambassador, an IBM Master Inventor, a Distinguished Engineer of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a Fellow of the British Computer Society (BCS), a Fellow of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), has been recognized by FedScoop as "The Most Inspiring Up & Comer" in the US Government (2015), by the National Society of Black Engineers (as Pioneer of the Year in 2009), by the Black Engineer of the Year Award Board (as Modern Day Technology Leader in 2009, Minority in Science Trailblazer in 2010, and Science Spectrum Trailblazer in 2012 and 2013), by the Federal Computer Weekly as a "Rising Star" (2016), by the Institute for Education as "High Impact Presidential Innovation Fellow" (2016), and has received the IEEE Technical Achievement Award in 2010 for "pioneering contributions to Secure and Private Data Management".

    He has authored over a 100 technical papers, co-invented over 47 patents and written several books, including "Practical Privacy Protection Online for Free", "Trust Management Middleware for Internet Applications: Combining Trust, Recommendation, Risk and Experience", and "Cybersecurity Risk Assessment for Business".

Natasha Bennett, PhD

Natasha Bennett, PhD

Dr. Bennett is a systems evaluator and human rights researcher with over 15 years of experience working to understand the social, economic, and political challenges that limit people’s ability to access and enjoy their human rights. Her strengths lie in leveraging a range of qualitative and participatory research methods and systems-level analytical frameworks to help ensure that social change efforts ultimately center the needs and desires of those communities and individuals who have the most to benefit.Show More

    In her current position as a Senior Consultant at ORS Impact, a woman-led and woman-owned evaluation and strategy consultancy based in Seattle, Natasha uses systems frameworks and evaluation approaches to help philanthropic and non-profit partners assess and increase the impact of their efforts to solve some of the most complex social issues, including, but not limited to, homelessness, and gender equity and agency.

    Before joining ORS Impact, Natasha worked at Seattle Jobs Initiative, a workforce development non-profit, where she designed interventions to improve access to education, training, and public benefits for adults from underinvested communities. She also has a passion for education and teaching. Her academic positions include Faculty Associate at Arizona State University, where she taught a Master's-level course on Gender Violence and Sex Trafficking; a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Puget Sound, where she taught comparative politics, human rights, and Latin American studies; and a Teaching Associate at UC Santa Barbara, where she taught classes on globalization, human rights, and international organizations.

    Natasha is also proud to have served as a commissioner and co-chair of the Seattle Human Rights Commission. Natasha is passionate about the power of empathy, curiosity, and dialogue to build meaningful relationships across identity and political divides.

    She holds a PhD and MA in Political Science, with an emphasis in Global & International Studies, from the University of California-Santa Barbara and a BA in Political Science and Latin American Studies from Rutgers University.