Dr. B. Jill Carroll is the Executive Director of the Boniuk Center for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance at Rice University. She is also Adjunct Associate Professor in Religious Studies at Rice University. Her research interests are issues in comparative religion, religion and world politics, and natural theology. She co-hosts with Kym King a regular radio program called "Peaceful Coexistence" on Pacifica 90.1FM KPFT in Houston. Podcasts of the show are available at the Boniuk Center website. She was president and founder of Religiosites, Inc., a company that provided religious diversity training to corporations, groups and individuals. In the late 90's she wrote a regular column for The Chronicle of Higher Education called "The Adjunct Track". She founded Adjunct Solutions, a consulting service for part-time faculty in North America. Her books include A Dialogue of Civilizations: Gülen's Islamic Ideals and Humanistic Discourse (The Light Inc. 2007) and The Savage Side: Reclaiming Violent Models of God (Rowman & Littlefield 2001).

Dr. Jill Carroll believes that peaceful coexistence between people of different religions and cultures is the central challenge of our era. Twenty-first century mass communications, mass travel, and the global economy ensure that we are interconnected and interdependent in ways never before seen in human history. This reality makes new demands on us – and presents new challenges for us - in both our personal and professional lives.

Dr. Carroll is a public scholar who believes peaceful coexistence can be achieved when people make an effort to understand each other rather than relying on stereotypes and prejudice. Understanding requires knowledge, that is, factual information presented in an unbiased fashion and rooted in the latest data and research. As a scholar in religious studies, Dr. Carroll has spent over two decades studying the world’s religions and major religious movements – their histories, principal founders, central beliefs, basic rituals, current issues, and their impact in public life and in contemporary politics.