 George Anton Kiraz, Ph.D.
President George is the President and co-founder of Gorgias Press. Born in Bethlehem, he immigrated to the United States and attended California State University, Northridge, where he obtained a degree in Engineering in 1990. He then became the first student to obtain the M.St. degree in Syriac Studies at the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford in 1991. Wishing to combine his technical background with his passion for Syriac and Semitic languages, he joined the University of Cambridge where he obtained an M.Phil. in Computational Linguistics and a Ph.D. in the same. He wrote his thesis on computing the morphology of Arabic and Syriac.
In 1996, George became a research scientist at Bell Laboratories, NJ, where he worked on speech technology. In 2000, he was hired by Nuance Communications, a speech technology startup, to help establish and lead a New York branch of the company. This gave George tremendous experience in management, but was short lived due to the stock market crash of 2001.
Already a published author, George co-founded Gorgias Press along with his wife Christine in 2001. The press was announced to the public in the summer of 2001 at the Leiden Peshitta conference, and later to a larger public in November 2001 with 10 books in the Press’s catalog. Within a short period of time, the press grew at a rate of publishing 70 titles per year.
George is married to Christine and together they have two children, Tabetha Gabriella and Sebastian Kenoro. In his free time (whatever is left of it), George directs Beth Mardutho, The Syriac Institute. His hobbies include collecting printed types, reading, and writing.
 Christine Kiraz, Ph.D.
Vice President Christine is the Vice President and co-founder of Gorgias Press. She obtained her undergraduate degree in Chemistry from UCLA. Later, Christine worked in the pharmaceutical industry to return to graduate school where she obtained her M.S. in Chemistry from UCLA and then a Ph.D. from Rutgers University.
At Gorgias Press, Christine wears many hats. She is the Director of Marketing and in charge of Human Resources, as well as Customer Service. During the first year of the press, she designed book covers for over 100 books. She would love to go back to designing covers at some point but still remains involved in the design process.
Christine has always loved literature and read most of the European classics since an early age, first in Turkish then in English. She never quite fit in with the chemists as she used to read Shakespeare in between HPLC or NMR runs. She still likes to think that she has time to read and continues to collect books in various areas of literature, fiction and history of science especially alchemy. She loves to listen and dance to Syriac and Turkish folk music and is very happy that she finally got an iPod. She claims to have a reading knowledge of Syriac and was quite impressed with her ability to speak Syriac at a level of a three year old during her trip to Tur Abdin in her conversations with the angelic nuns of the Mor Gabriel Monastery in Turkey.
Christine is married to George and together they have Tabetha Gabriella and Sebastian Kenoro.
 Katie Stott, Ph.D
Production & Acquisitions Editor Katie is the Production Editor at Gorgias Press. Being based in Australia, she also manages the acquisition of new titles from authors working in the southern part of the globe. Katie holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Queensland (Australia) and completed a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta (Canada). Her primary area of research interest is comparative ancient historiography, with a particular focus on the Hebrew Bible and classical literature, in which she has various publications. She also has a background in several ancient languages, including biblical Hebrew and Koiné Greek.
At the University of Alberta, she has been involved with the editing and publication of articles for the online open access Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, now available in print from Gorgias Press.
Beyond her pursuits in publishing and academia, Katie is a passionate foodie and intends one day to combine her interests in food and books and publish a cookbook of her own.
 Jasmaile Eumnath
Customer Service Specialist
Jasmaile graduated from Rutgers University in 2003 with a B.A. in Communications. She brings her expertise to Gorgias Press from a complementing background in Human Resource management and eight years of service at the New Brunswick Free Public Library. A native of Guyana, Jasmaile moved to New Jersey at 12 and has since taken up residence at the university town adjacent to Gorgias Press. Art house, independent, and international films dovetail with her desire to visit faraway places and learn about different cultures. When she's not polishing her craft in social graces, she keeps her retrieving skills in shape through crossword puzzles and trivia games. Though she may playfully sample dishes, she is actually nurturing her no longer secret ambition to join the Culinary Institute of America.
 Jack Tannous, Ph.D. Candidate
Acquisitions Specialist Jack Tannous was born and raised in Houston, Texas. For his BA, he attended the University of Texas, at Austin, where he majored in Philosophy, Arabic, Middle Eastern Studies and History. After UT, Jack attended Oxford, where he recieved an MPhil in Eastern Christian Studies and represented Gorgias Press at academic conferences in the UK. He is currently a graduate student at Princeton, working on a PhD in history, where he focuses on Late Antique, early Islamic, and Byzantine history in the Near East. Jack lives in Princeton, New Jersey and likes it there, though Texas will always be home. He is a graduate student and by definition does not have any free time, but he has been known to enjoy reading, going for walks, listening to music, just hanging out and talking with friends, and even dancing. Once upon a time, he used to play sports and lift weights as well.
 Gene Fojtik, Ph.D. Candidate
Midwest Conference Representative
Gene Fojtik was born in Houston, TX and raised in Austin. He received his BA in Spanish and Portuguese from the University of Texas at Austin, where he also studied Classical Greek, Hebrew, and Tajik. He worked for seven years as a house painter and after graduation he spent a year as a middle school Spanish teacher. He subsequently received his MA in Theological Studies from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Currently he is a PhD student in Biblical Studies at the University of Chicago where he focuses on the role of Greek paideia in the Early Church. He enjoys drawing (mainly during lectures), cooking, and listening to Portuguese or Spanish music. He is married to Nissy Abraham who studies Sanskrit and Greek at Chicago as well. Pictured here at the Chicago Tribune, Gene communes with his beloved Texas through a hallowed stone from the Alamo imbedded in the tower.
 Jeff Volkmer, Ph.D. Candidate
West Coast Conference Representative Jeff Volkmer was born and raised in Rochester, NY before he moved to Honolulu to play volleyball for the University of Hawai’i where he received his B.A. in English. After Hawai’i, Jeff moved to Texas to attend Dallas Theological Seminary where he received his Th.M. and found a love for Syriac studies, Syriac Bible versions, and Old Testament text criticism. He is now pursuing a D.Phil. at Oxford studying the Pehitta Psalter under the supervision of Dr. David G. K. Taylor, and hopes to make a living through his passion of teaching one day. Jeff is married to Jessica and they have two children, Grace, age 5, and John, age 2. When not practicing verbal paradigms, Jeff’s favorite two favorite activities are playing with his kids and having evening tea with Jessica.
 Dirk Bakker, Ph.D. Candidate
European Conference Representative Dirk has always had a fascination for languages in general, as well as for beautiful writing systems, typography, calligraphy and the like. As a child he used to design his own languages and scripts; and, admittedly, sometimes he still does. Studying linguistics seemed an obvious choice. He decided to go for something entirely uncommon, namely ancient Semitic languages, with a specialization in Syriac. Its language and literature (and its particularly aesthetic script) captivated him for good, and he decided to keep studying it alongside linguistics. A small research project in the Vatican library, where he had first-hand experience with ancient Syriac manuscripts, formed the basis of his master thesis. Currently Dirk is part of a PhD project at Leiden University, on the computer-assisted linguistic analysis of Syriac and other Aramaic texts.
 Tabetha and Sebastian Kenoro
CEO and CFO of Harp of the Gazelle Imprint Harp of the Gazelle Children Books is an imprint of Gorgias Press LLC. The name derives from its two cofounders: five-year old Tabetha (Aramaic for gazelle), CEO, and two-year old Kenoro (Syriac for harp), CFO. The publications of Harp of the Gazelle Children Books introduce children to the fascinating world of antiquity.
Tabetha, CEO, is a trilingual. She speaks Classical Syriac with her father, Turkish with her mother and English elsewhere. She loves to read books and to make books. Her favorite book manufacturing project is to get her father to print clip art images which she then cuts and pastes in books.
Sebastian Kenoro, CFO, is also growing in a multilingual environment. His favorite activity is to put coins in a piggy bank, only to take them out later—not too dissimilar from the press’s cash flow. He loves to flip books at a high speed making you think he reads them. He loves puzzles, trains, running and singing.
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