John W Gehring John W Gehring serves as an RYS Executive Director. A native of Long Island, New York, John is a Unificationist [www.unification.org] who has spent much of the past 25 years leading international service learning projects. John created and led RYS's Africa Rising, Friendship Americas and Asia Friendship programs from the 1990-2006. During two decades of international service, John served as a leader in development projects in over 50 countries. He is a sports enthusiast who has further extended his interrreligious work in the development of the Interreligious Peace Sports Festival [www.IPSFestival.org]. In recent years he has developed a sports for character program called Sports for a Better Life that has been introduced to schools and audiences in India, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand. In March, 2010, John stepped back into the position of RYS Executive Director, a post he is holding for the third time in the past 21 years.
John's education spans from being a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy [www.usna.edu]to living in religious communes and studying world religion at the graduate level. John and his wife Yoshiko live in New Jersey and have five children who are all RYS alumni.
