Virginia Gray Henry's studies and expertise revolve around Islamic spiritual issues. An active publisher, editor, scholar, educator, and community activist, Ms. Gray currently directs the interfaith publishing houses Fons Vitae and Quinta Essentia, academic, nonprofit and educational charities concerned with world religions, art, spirituality, and symbolism with an emphasis on Islam.

An involved educator and lecturer, Ms. Gray's teaching experience spans a multitude of subjects, institutions and continents. She is under contract with the London-based Book Foundation to help write and produce curriculum for Muslim children emphasizing the religious dimension of math, literature, world civilization, and nature. She has taught art history, world religions and filmmaking at the Dalton School in New York City, Fordham University, and the Cairo American College, and world religions at Cambridge University and Center College in Danville, Kentucky. Ms. Gray lectures regularly on world religions to groups from institutions such as Spalding University, the Abbey of Gethsemani, and internationally at congresses such as the 1995 Conference on World Spiritual Art in Tehran. She is also a Co-Founder and trustee of The Islamic Texts Society in Cambridge, an organization that received the Best Produced and Designed Book in Great Britain Awards in both 1991 and 1993.

An avid community educator, Ms. Gray is a regular creator of events designed to educate the community in the realm of Inter-Faith. In 1993, she worked in Bosnian refugee camps and later raised funds and published textbooks for their educational system. She coordinated the 1999 Merton and Islam Conference held at Bellarmine College and 2001 Merton and Hesychasm Conference. In 2006, Ms. Gray facilitated a meeting between the Dalai Lama and Muslim scholars and dignitaries from the entire Muslim world, including ISNA's Seyyid Mohammad Syed and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf. The subject of the meeting was compassion and the problems of extremism. Ms. Gray is a Founding Member of the Thomas Merton Center Foundation, as well as an emeritus board member and permanent participant on the organization's Programs Committee.

Virginia Gray Henry received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History and World Religions from Sarah Lawrence College and a Master of Arts in Education from the University of Michigan with a specialization in curriculum development and video production. She studied Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies at the American University in Cairo from 1969-1979 and was a Cambridge University Research fellow from 1983 to 1990. She expects to receive a Ph.D. from Canterbury, Kent in 2009.