Brie Loskota

Brie Loskota is the executive director of the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion at University of Chicago. She was formerly executive director (2016-2021) and managing director (2008-2016) with Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California.

Her research focuses on how religions change and make change in the world. She is co-founder of the American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute and serves as the implementation partner for the United States Institute of Peace’s Generation Change program, where she has trained young leaders from across the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and South America.

Loskota provides expert guidance to local, state and federal government agencies to ensure more effective partnership with faith communities on issues including public health, mental health and disasters. She co-authored the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) training curriculum on engaging faith communities in disasters and 16 tip sheets aimed at increasing religious competency in disaster response. She co-edited a religious literacy primer for disaster response and a field guide for faith community engagement for emergency management and public health officials.

Her writing have been published by the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Aspen Journal of Ideas, Religion Dispatches, Los Angeles Magazine, the Brookings Institute, the Aspen Institute, and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Her commentary has also been featured in the Los Angeles Time, The Nation, National Public Radio, Washington Post, Public Broadcasting, Voice of America, and Take Part Live. She has spoken at the World Economic Forum, the US-Islamic World Forum, the Aspen Institute, KPCC (NPR), and at universities, foundations, and community groups around the globe.

She is actively involved in community and non-profit organizations that work at the intersection of religion and the public square, including NewGround: A Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change, Religion Dispatches, the Guibord Center: Religion Inside Out, L.A. Voice, L.A. Emergency Preparedness Foundation and Jewish World Watch, where she also chaired the Solar Cooker Project, an initiative that supplied solar cookers to Darfuri Refugees living in Chad. She serves as the faith sector liaison for the Los Angeles Emergency Preparedness Foundation, which coordinates private sector disaster response with the city’s Emergency Operations Center. In 2018, she was appointed to the Peacebuilding Deeply advisory board, a project of News Deeply.

The World Economic Forum selected Loskota as a member of their 2017 Young Global Leaders class. She is a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Truman National Security Fellow, and a Homegrown Violent Extremism Study Group associate at USC.

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