Dr. Omar Sharifi currently serves as Assistant Professor of Social Sciences and Humanities at the American University of Afghanistan and as Country Director of the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies, a center in Kabul for visiting American academics engaged in Afghanistan studies. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Civil Society Development Center.

After graduating from Kabul Medical Institute in 2003, Dr. Sharifi worked as Head of research and publications for the Foundation for Culture and Civil Society in Kabul and as Director of the Open Media Fund for Afghanistan. From 2006 to 2008, he studied Cultural Anthropology at Columbia University under a Fulbright Fellowship before completing his PhD at Boston University in 2019, where he conducted research on poetry and identity in Afghanistan.

Shoshana Stewart is the CEO of Turquoise Mountain, an international NGO working in Afghanistan, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan to revive historic neighborhoods and traditional crafts in order to create jobs, skills, and a renewed sense of pride in areas where culture is under threat.

Shoshana has spent the last 14 years leading the charity to restore and rebuild over 150 historic buildings and train over 6,000 traditional artisans and builders. During her tenure as CEO, Shoshana expanded the initial project in the old city of Kabul across Afghanistan and to three other countries.

Shoshana Stewart has an MBA from the London Business School, a master's degree in education, and a bachelor's degree in astrophysics. She is currently Senior Fellow at the Yale Jackson Institute For Global Affairs. Prior to Turquoise Mountain, she worked as a teacher and administrator in low-income urban communities with Teach For America and Uncommon Schools in New York, Boston, and Honduras.

Rory Stewart is currently Senior Fellow at the Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, where he is focusing on contemporary politics in crisis and international development. Previously, Stewart served as the UK Secretary of State for International Development.

Prior to that, Stewart served as Minister of the Environment, Minister of State responsible for development policy in the Middle East and Asia and UK policy in Africa, Minister of State for Justice, and as Chair of the House of Commons Defense Select Committee. Earlier in his career, he served as an infantry officer and then as a diplomat for the UK government. On leave from the Foreign Service, he walked for 21 months across Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Nepal, staying in 500 village houses on the journey. From 2005 to 2008, he was the Chair and Chief Executive of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation based in Kabul.

Stewart has written four books: The Places In Between, Occupational Hazards or The Prince of the Marshes, Can Intervention Work?, and The Marches.

Bénédicte de Montlaur is President and Chief Executive Officer of World Monuments Fund (WMF), the world’s foremost private organization dedicated to saving extraordinary places while empowering the communities around them. She is responsible for defining WMF’s strategic vision, currently implementing that vision in more than 30 countries around the world and leading a team that spans the globe. Her background mixes culture and the arts, politics, international diplomacy and human rights. Prior to joining WMF, Montlaur spent two decades working across three continents as a senior diplomat at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Inaugurated in 2003, the Paul Mellon Lecture is supported by the Paul Mellon Education Fund and enables audiences to learn about critical issues in the field of cultural heritage.

Past Mellon Lecture speakers include Kent Weeks discussing the challenges of tourism management in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt; Charles Dempsey on the history of the Carracci Gallery in the Farnese Palace in Rome; Anna Somers Cox on the impact of ever-increasing tourist numbers in Venice; and Iwan Baan offering the audience a glimpse into the intricacies of his photographic process, capturing culture with intimate detail and profound emotion.

A series of conversations at the nexus of history, culture and current global issues with top thought leaders, activists, artists, journalists, and politicians, Heritage Now explores why monuments and other cultural heritage sites are such a vital part of our local and global ecosystems; the history and relevance of these sites in our contemporary context; the urgent threats to their preservation; and what we can do—individually and collectively—to protect these irreplaceable treasures.