Location: Decatur Ballroom
Details to come.
SPEAKERS
Mat McDermott
Mat McDermott is the Senior Director for Communications for the Hindu American Foundation, the largest and oldest non-profit advocacy organization for Hindus living in the United States. His podcast All About Hinduism was honored by the Religion Communicators Council for excellence in broadcasting (2024). He was lead author of the 2015 Hindu Declaration on Climate Change. Prior to his work with HAF, he was an advisor for the Bhumi Project, an environmental charity based at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies (Oxford, UK); worked with Omega Center for Sustainable Living (Rhinebeck, NY); and Discovery Channel (Silver Spring, MD). He currently lives in Los Angeles County, California.
Angad Singh
Angad Singh is an American Sikh independent journalist and documentary producer whose work explores the intersections of diaspora identity, geopolitics, and global power. His reporting connects lived experience with major world events, examining how communities navigate conflict, state violence, and political change.
Singh began making documentaries at age 13, growing up as the only Sikh in his school district in the American South in the years following 9/11. Motivated by a desire to challenge fear and misinformation through storytelling, he later studied political science at Columbia University before working as a producer with outlets including VICE News, CNN, and MSNBC.
At VICE News, Singh produced internationally recognized documentary films that earned an Emmy Award and multiple industry honors. His reporting on India, however, also led to his blacklisting by the Indian government. In 2022, Singh was denied entry and deported from India, a case that has since become a prominent press freedom issue.
Today, Singh works independently, producing journalism that foregrounds accountability, historical context, and voices often marginalized in mainstream media. He shares his work on social platforms (@AngadGSingh) and through his Patreon at Patreon.com/AngadGSingh.
Peter Smith
Peter Smith is a reporter on the Global Religion team of The Associated Press. He previously covered religion for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Louisville Courier-Journal and as a freelancer for Religion News Service and other outlets. He was part of the Post-Gazette team that received a 2019 Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the Pittsburgh synagogue attack. He’s a former president of the Religion News Association.
Dina Zingaro
Dina Zingaro is finishing a five-year dual degree at Harvard Law School (JD ‘26) and Harvard Divinity School (MDiv ‘26) where she has been both a Presidential Public Service Fellow and Presidential Scholar. Her scholarship in Orthodox Christian theology engages questions of gender, sexuality, and embodiment, while her work in law and religion analyzes the constitutive relationship among ethics, theology, and U.S. constitutional law. She won the student note competition at the Harvard Journal of Law and Gender, resulting in her forthcoming article about the weaponization of the biblical creation story (Genesis 1-3) in U.S. law against LGBTQ+ Americans. Dina will begin a PhD in Theological and Social Ethics at Fordham University in September 2026.
Dina has been trained in Orthodox preaching at the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Massachusetts and preaches regularly at Orthodox churches.
Before graduate school, Dina worked at CBS News for eight years, including four years as an Associate Producer and Co-Producer for 60 Minutes where she received multiple News Emmy nominations.
MODERATOR
Deepa Bharath
Deepa Bharath is a reporter on AP's Global Religion team based in Los Angeles. Prior to taking on this role in February 2022, Deepa was a staff writer for the Orange County Register and the Southern California News Group for 16 years, where she covered a number of beats including religion, race, health and city government.