Leadership
Dr. Kyle Wisdom - Director of Global Advocacy
Dr. Kyle Wisdom was appointed Director of Global Advocacy of the World Evangelical Alliance in September 2024. He is also Deputy Director of the International Institute for Religious Freedom, helping expand the Violent Incidents Database, a service of the IIRF to collect, record and analyze violations of religious freedom. He has also been involved in interfaith projects and consulting with governments and policy makers.
Gaetan Roy - WEA Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva
Gaetan Roy is Chairman of network-m, Board member of the Association of Evangelical Missions (AEM), and represents both in the German and European Parliaments. He has extensive experience in international humanitarian aid and advocacy. He is also Missions Director of the Evangelical church Jugend-, Missions- und Sozialwerk (JMS) in Germany and leads the Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) Initiative of the International Partnership on Religion and Sustainable Development (pard.international). Since 2022, he also serves as the WEA Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva.
Dr. Janet Epp Buckingham - Director of WEA Geneva Office
Dr. Janet Epp Buckingham is the Director of the Geneva Office of the World Evangelical Alliance since September 2024. From July 2021 to August 2024, Dr. Buckingham was the Director of Global Advocacy of the WEA. She is also the Executive Editor of the International Journal for Religious Freedom, the flagship publication of the International Institute for Religious Freedom. Dr. Buckingham is a Professor of Political Studies at Trinity Western University with a research focus on religious freedom law in Canada and internationally. She is also the Co-Director of the International Institute for Religious Freedom (Vancouver). She has a doctorate in Public Law from the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.
Matthias K. Boehning - WEA Permanent Representative to the UN in Bonn
Matthias K. Boehning serves as Co-Director of the World Evangelical Alliance Sustainability Center and Permanent Representative of the WEA to the United Nations in Bonn, Germany. Matthias is also the Chief Diplomat for the Secretary General of the WEA. He has an academic background in development economics and business administration and has studied in Hohenheim, Germany, and Stellenbosch, South Africa. He has worked in different positions in international cooperation in Europe and Africa over the past decade.
Chris Elisara - Co-Director of the WEA Sustainability Center
Dr. Elisara founded, and now co-directs, the World Evangelical Alliance’s Sustainability Center. In this role Dr. Elisara represents evangelical perspectives on creation care and urban issues in international arenas including the World Economic Forum (WEF), United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), UNFCC, and UN-Habitat. He is a consulting expert and team member of the WEF’s Faith in Action project. In 2016 he co-founded the CNU Members Christian Caucus. He served on the secretariat of UN-Habitat’s World Urban Campaign (WUC) as co-chair of WUC’s Civil Society Partners Group from 2020-2022, and is the current chair of WUC’s Media Partners. Dr. Elisara also chairs the task force for UN-Habitat’s signature program, SDG Cities.
John J. Girgis - WEA Permanent Representative to the UN in New York
Born in Egypt, John is an American businessman with extensive multicultural experience as an international businessman and local church leader. He started a career in the energy business which gave him the opportunity to work, live and travel broadly meeting and working with many cultures and nationalities. He was part of starting an international church (Jakarta International Christian Fellowship) with over 30 nationalities from many religious backgrounds. John serves as the permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York.