Sheila Wise Rowe

Sheila Wise Rowe is a truth-teller who writes passionately about matters of faith and emotional healing. She advocates for the dignity, rights, and healing of abuse survivors, those carrying racial trauma, and racial conciliation. Sheila holds a Master’s degree in Counseling and has lived in the USA, Paris, France and Johannesburg, South Africa.

For over twenty-five years Sheila has been a counselor, educator, writer, spiritual director, and speaker. She is a member of the Community Ethics Committee of Harvard Medical School, a policy-review resource for its teaching hospitals. She is a member of the Redbud Writers Guild and writes essays for several publications including; The Redbud Post, Mudroomblog.com, The Art of Taleh, and The Boston Sunday Globe.  Sheila’s book; Healing Racial Trauma: The Road to Resilience released by InterVarsity Press (IVP) in 2020 was awarded the 2021 best book in Christian Living/ Discipleship by Christianity Today. When Sheila is not writing or counseling she creates art, and crafts or searches for treasures in local antique and thrift shops.

Gregory Thompson

Gregory Thompson is a scholar, writer, and artist of diverse creative background whose work focuses on race, religion, hospitality, and democracy in the United States. He serves as Executive Director of Voices Underground, an initiative to build a national memorial to the Underground Railroad outside of Philadelphia; Research Fellow in African American Heritage at Lincoln University (HBCU); and as Creative Director of Star & Lantern, a new Cocktail Bar in Kennett Square, PA whose story centers in the African American freedom struggle and the Underground Railroad (Opening June 2021). He is the Co-Creator of Union: The Musical, a soul and hip-hop based musical about the 1968 Sanitation Workers’ Strike, Co-Author (with Reverend Duke Kwon) of Reparations: A Christian Call to Repentance and Repair and is currently writing a work that explores the role of love in the work of Martin Luther King. He holds an M.A. and PhD from the University of Virginia.

Dennae Pierre

Dennae Pierre is co-Director for the Crete Collective and leads the Surge Network in Arizona. She also serves as one of the Co-Directors for City to City North America. She has her MA from Covenant Theological Seminary and DMin from Western Theological Seminary (Holland, Michigan) and is the author of Healing Prayers to Resist a Violent World. Dennae is married to Vermon, the lead pastor at Roosevelt Community Church, a multi-ethnic church in downtown Phoenix and they have five children.

KRISTIN KOBES DU MEZ

Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a New York Times bestselling author and Professor of History and Gender Studies at Calvin University. She holds a PhD from the University of Notre Dame and her research focuses on the intersection of gender, religion, and politics. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Religion News Service, and Christianity Today, and has been interviewed on NPR, CBS, and the BBC, among other outlets. Her most recent book is Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.

Michelle Ami Reyes

Michelle Ami Reyes, PhD, is the Vice President of the AACC and Co-Executive Director of Pax. She is the Scholar in Residence at Hope Community Church and author of Becoming All Things: How Small Changes Lead to Lasting Connections Across Cultures and Becoming All Things Study Guide and Conversation Cards. Michelle lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and two amazing kids.