Mary Ellen Giess is Chief Program Officer at Interfaith America, overseeing strategy, alignment, and integration across IA’s program areas in higher education, workplaces, and civic communities. Mary Ellen manages high-priority partnerships for IA, including collaborations with the Obama White House, IA’s higher education research partnership, and Team Up, IA’s partnership with Habitat, the Y, and Catholic Charities USA. Mary Ellen is the co-editor of Educating About Religious Diversity and Interfaith Engagement: A Handbook for Student Affairs (2019) and the author of numerous articles including publications in the Washington Post, Inside Higher Ed,  and The Chronicle of Higher Education.  She holds degrees from Harvard Divinity School and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.