Joan Keston '75

"We just need to embrace people. We can’t carry on the way we have in the past; we’ve got to understand what goes on elsewhere."

Diversity - Three Faiths Forum

While people and organizations alike searched for answers and solutions in the widening wake of the September 11 attacks, Joan Keston dived right into the source of the problem.

By profession an attorney and businesswoman, Keston has pooled her talent for management into founding Three Faiths Forum, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to breaking down historical barriers among the three religions devoted to belief in one god — Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

With a degree in economics and biology from Bucknell, Keston began her career track at Villanova University School of Law, and later at the University of Miami School of Law where she studied international law. Following her interest in international business, she lived and worked in Europe, Brazil , and North Africa — providing experiences she says that formed the basis of her respect for other cultures and religions.

But it was in the post-September 11 world that the need for cross-cultural understanding became apparent. "Diversity is nothing new," she explains. "We've always had diversity of cultures. Only now we've been forced to recognize that the global issues are so huge, and that we can't solve them without involving all people, nations, cultures."

Keston's original plan for the Three Faiths Forum involved public symposiums and discussions led by local leaders Rabbi Terry A. Brookman of Temple Beth Am, the Rev. Donald W. Krickbaum of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, and Dr. Abdul Hamid Samra, Imam at Miami Gardens Mosque.

"We dealt with issues of discrimination, fundamentalism, the history of religious discord, and how we can come together to live peaceful and harmonious lives," she says.

The organization is also initiating an outreach project, for which video documentaries from the symposiums will be packaged with discussion materials and sent to interested religious centers, organizations, and schools across the country. Keston hopes the program can generate open discussion and awareness nationally as successfully as it has in her Florida community, and help lend people a global consciousness.

"We just need to embrace people," Keston says of her work with Three Faiths. "We need to judge them or value them by how they take responsibility for their actions, how they give, not by their religion or nationality. We can't carry on the way we have in the past; we've got to understand what goes on elsewhere."