OUR PEOPLE

Advancing Truth Through Collaborative Scholarship

Meet the scholars and leaders dedicated to providing faithful biblical resources and fostering theological inquiry on a global scale.

Steering Committee

Reinier de Blois

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Paul O'Rear

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Jonathan Robie

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Software & Resource Development

Maggie Campo is a software engineer working in collaboration with The Seed Company, SIL, Biblica and New Kingdom Builders to build applications that present Bible Translation content. Recent apps include AkuoBible.org, Akuo mobile app, and BibleImageLibrary.org. Prior to becoming an independent contractor, Maggie held a variety of software roles with IBM Corporation.

She holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the University of Florida and lives in Orlando, Florida.

Maggie Campo

Johnny Knox is a creative technologist exploring how artificial intelligence can support communication, translation, and visual storytelling in global contexts. His work focuses on developing tools and visual resources that help communicate biblical texts across cultures and languages.

He is the co-founder of Mohinga Media and leads the openbibleimages.org initiative, a project producing historically grounded visual resources for Scripture. His work combines design, theology, historical research, and emerging AI technologies to support translators, educators, and ministry organizations around the world.

Johnny and his family have lived and worked in Southeast Asia for more than a decade. Alongside his creative work, he has led several social and media ventures focused on communication and economic development. He contributes to the Nida Institute through research and experimentation on the responsible use of AI in translation and global communication.

Johnny Knox

Paul O'Rear is a linguist and software engineer. He served SIL in Papua New Guinea from 1988-1994 as a Bible translator and sociolinguistics coordinator. From 1994-1997 Paul was part of SIL’s work in developing biblical language resources for Translator’s Workplace and the Biblical Analysis Research Tool (BART). Paul left SIL in 1997 and was a software consultant for 5 years before going to work for Microsoft Corporation from 2002-2015. Paul’s software expertise has been in content management and hypertext systems. At Microsoft he was the Test Manager for the Visual Studio Help System and later the Program Manager for the Visual Studio Help Viewer still in use today.

Paul returned to SIL in 2015 to oversee the development of translation guidance resource materials, Translator’s Workplace, and other translation resource and software related work. He has also been part of SIL’s Global Translation Coordination team. In his current role, Paul is focused on the application of AI to translation resource development and additional content and software related work.

Paul is completing an MA in Applied Linguistics with Dallas International University focusing on Discourse Analysis.

Paul and his wife Tuula have two adult children, one with special needs living with them. They live in Shiremanstown, PA (USA).

Paul O'Rear

Jonathan Robie is an R&D Fellow at Biblica whose work focuses on developing new approaches to Bible engagement and translation using AI-assisted tools and oral methods. He is the creator of Scripture Pipelines, a framework for orchestrating large language models to support complex workflows, including analysis of biblical resources, lexicons, and Scripture engagement. He is also the developer of Ears to Hear, an approach that helps people encounter Scripture through embodied, emotional, and communal listening to the text.

His work explores how technology, linguistics, and pedagogy can help people engage Scripture more deeply across cultures and languages. In addition to these projects, he has contributed to the development of a range of open linguistic resources and tools, including Macula Greek and Hebrew, TreeDown, and reader-focused lexicography projects such as the Kairos Semantic Dictionary.

Jonathan Robie

Benjamin C Varghese is the Manager of the Research and Innovation department at NLCI in Bangalore and is seconded to the Nida Institute team. His work focuses on developing software solutions and creating essential resources for Bible translators across India, with a strong emphasis on providing technical training and support to translation teams. His primary area of interest is language technology.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science.
Benjamin lives in Kerala, India, with his wife, Nissy, and their two children, Geo and Jaiz.

Benjamin Varghese

Oral Bible Translation Team

Reinier de Blois is a linguist who served as a missionary Bible translator in Nigeria from 1983 to 1990. In 1991, he started working as a translation consultant for United Bible Societies (UBS) in several African countries (Guinea, Tanzania, and Sierra Leone). In 2003 he was appointed editor-in-chief of the Semantic Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew. From 2011 to 2019, he was head of the Institute for Computer Assisted Publishing. In 2019 he joined the American Bible Society to become director of the Nida Institute. Since 2025 the Nida Institute has been an integrated part of UBS.

He holds a PhD on Hebrew Lexicography (2000) from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.

Reinier and his wife Willemijn have five children and six grandchildren. He and his wife live in Grand Rapids, MI (USA).

Reinier de Blois

Dan Fitzgerald retired from the Nida Institute at the American Bible Society in 2024. His applied research specialty has been the study of oral traditions and ethnopoetics. Dan served in the Baka Bible translation project in Cameroon from 1996-2008, earned his PhD from the University of Florida in 2011, and is currently on the faculty for the Interconfessional Diploma Program in Bible Translation at the Pontifical University of Urbaniana in Vatican City, Rome.

Dan Fitzgerald

Yves Léonard

Yves Léonard, a French-Canadian member of Wycliffe Canada, is a linguist and translation consultant seconded to the Nida Institute and serves as a field coordinator for projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since 1994, he has worked with numerous language communities in Francophone Africa, specializing in oral strategies for people groups where the spoken word is more central than the written word. Since 2011, he has devoted particular attention to training exegetes and translation consultants to implement these strategies.

Fausto Liriano is part of the NIDA team and a Bible Translation Consultant with the United Bible Societies (UBS), working with translations in Suriname (Sarnami), Guatemala (Ixil, Mam and Sipakapense), Philippines and Mexico. His current research topics are orality in the Hebrew Bible, and Hebrew Bible's idioms and their translation to indigenous languages.

He holds a PhD on Semitic Philology from the University of Barcelona.

Fausto lives in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) with his wife Noelia and their two kids: Benjamin and Daniela.

Fausto Liriano

Jospin Muswe

Jospin is an expert in leadership and discipleship, and a personal development coach, specialized in holistic mission.

He is an author and public speaker as well.

He holds a MA in Theology and lives in Kinshasa (DRC Congo).